by Matt Rogers
The dented steel door swung open.
King’s heart rate skyrocketed as he levelled the barrel of his carbine, awaiting a blaze of gunfire in return.
When the driver of the Kaya tumbled out of the doorway in a semi-conscious state, he relaxed.
The guy’s face was a bloodied mess. He sprawled on his back into the snow, landing hard on a tangle of branches. A rivulet of blood ran off the side of his head and tinged the snow around his head crimson. He sucked in deep breaths and stared up at the night sky.
The crash had knocked him senseless.
King strode up to the man and planted a combat boot against his chest, ensuring he stayed put. He touched the M4A1’s barrel to his throat, pinning him to the ground.
‘You want to live?’ King said.
The man stared up at him with a vacant expression plastered across his face. He coughed viciously, and wiped a hand across his mouth. King didn’t flinch. He knew the man was unarmed. He wasn’t reaching for a weapon.
‘I need some information,’ King said. ‘Or I’ll kill you right here.’
His voice faltered unintentionally. Truth was, if this man died, then the last shred of hope King had of finding the missing workers died with him. It would leave him amidst a dozen corpses with nothing to show for it.
The workers could very well be hundreds of miles away by this point.
The driver seemed to know that.
With his eyes still glassy, the man reached for King’s gun barrel — slowly, tentatively. He gripped the metal tight and shifted King’s aim from his throat to his forehead. Then he raised the same hand and beckoned in King’s face.
The guy smiled, exposing bloodstained teeth.
‘Do it,’ he spat in thickly-accented English.
King grimaced. He had few options. The longer he spent trying to prise the answer out of the driver underneath him was more time that the guy’s comrades had to respond to the carnage. Spending unnecessary time around this village would prove disastrous.
He sensed that there were many more enemies to deal with.
It took significant manpower to wipe a ten-person party of health workers off the face of the planet.
Whatever this operation was, King knew he had stumbled on something serious.
He looked into the eyes of the driver. The guy’s features were covered in blood. His pupils were hard and cold.
Soulless.
This man would not talk.
As soon as the realisation struck King, he slipped a finger into the trigger guard and fired. One shot was all it took. The hard ground behind the man’s head masked the grisly exit wound that blew out the back of his head.
King turned away from the corpse and gathered his belongings.
No time for contemplation.
Not out here.
A simple decision, followed by immediate action. That was how he would make it through whatever came next.
He had no idea what that might be.
As he scooped up the duffel bag and slung it over one shoulder, bearing the full brunt of its weight, he noted the sheer silence of his surroundings. Before the conflict, even the slightest noise amidst the forest set his nerves on edge. Now he heard nothing. After dozens of discharged rifle rounds and the madness of the Kaya roaring towards him, the aftermath felt like a graveyard.
It is, he thought.
He strode past the Kaya, still overturned against the forest floor. Surrounded by destruction. He glanced at the enormous vehicle and sighed as he imagined charging headlong into enemy territory at the wheel of such a ride.
But it would take an industrial-sized crane to overturn the truck.
This far from civilisation, he had nothing.
With the mountain winds whispering against his cold-weather gear, he stepped out onto the same gravel trail. Then he sensed it. The tingling against the back of his neck, like he was being observed. After years upon years in similar situations, he had honed the sensation down to a tee.
He wasn’t wrong often.
He glanced up and met the gaze of a sole figure, standing on the other side of the road, silhouetted against the forest behind.
Watching.
Waiting.
15
King reacted instinctively, bringing the barrel of his M4A1 up like a rocket. He had the weapon trained on the figure in the blink of an eye. His index finger acted of its own accord, slicing into the trigger guard and hovering a hair above the mechanism that would set the gun blazing at the twitch of a muscle.
As the situation became clearer, he relaxed.
It was a woman.
An elderly woman.
Unarmed.
Hands crossed against her chest.
The sight unnerved him almost more than a mercenary would have. Sure, this lady didn’t seem to want him dead, but something about her unblinking stare set him on edge.
‘Hello,’ he called above the wind.
The woman said nothing.
She looked to be in her early eighties — although if she was a resident of the village, she could very well be sixty. King imagined the weather and isolation took all kinds of tolls. She was wrapped in a simple woollen shawl. A rough beanie covered her wispy grey hair. Deep lines were creased into her forehead and cheeks.
‘English?’ King said.
She shook her head. As if to reassure him, she unfolded her arms and held them by her sides. Palms out, fingers splayed.
King lowered the carbine.
He walked across the road, almost checking for passing cars before shrugging off such a foolish gesture. He peered up the road at the town hall, once again shrouded in darkness. The only light came from the pair of deserted police sedans parked equidistant across the entrance. The Kaya had flattened the rear half of one of the vehicles on its mad chase. Both pairs of headlights still shone, illuminating the gaping hole in the front of the building.
The entranceway no longer existed.
King spotted a limb or two spread across the snow at the front of the building. A hand here, the side of a torso there.
The dead.
He hated spending time lingering around them.
He reached the old lady and slung his rifle over one shoulder, indicating that he had no intention of using the weapon. He could tell from her face that she meant no harm either.
Like she had been expecting to talk to him.
Like she had wanted him to kill the others.
King caught his breath, then pointed at the town hall. ‘My friends.’
She cocked her head.
He gesticulated to the building in the distance, then pointed hard at himself. ‘Them. Me. Together.’
She nodded understandingly, and bowed her head. Slowly, she rolled up one sleeve of her thick jumper, revealing a maze of puncture marks dotted around her protruding veins. She pointed to where she had received the injections, then at the town hall.
King nodded. ‘They were treating you. Now they’re gone.’
The woman lifted her chin, and King saw sadness in her eyes. He imagined she had formed a wordless bond with the foreigners sent to nurse her back to health.
Tuberculosis, he recalled Isla saying.
‘Do you know—?’ he started, taking his time to properly articulate the point he wanted to get across.
The woman cut him off with a raised hand. She used the same hand to hover two fingers above her eyes. Then she pointed those same fingers at the hall.
King raised his eyebrows. ‘You saw it happen?’
She said nothing.
‘You saw?’ he said, mimicking her gesture. He mimed wrestling with a captive, dragging them away.
The woman nodded grimly. She turned and silently pointed down the road, where the trail twisted away into the forest. The Kamchatka Peninsula lay beyond. From here, it looked treacherous as all hell. The mountains arced into the storm clouds, surrounded by narrow valleys and vast sweeping plains of rock and snow.
‘Along the road?’ King sa
id, following her gaze. ‘That way?’
She gestured to the ground beneath them, then made a rising and falling motion with her hand. She thrust a finger in the direction of the looming mountains.
‘Off-road? The peninsula?’
A nod.
King grimaced. He had feared as much. The workers had been abducted and taken into one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet. King had no familiarity with the area, and no idea what he would be heading into.
Yet he had to persevere.
This battle had unfolded at lightning speed, a confrontation so fast and vicious that the dead men around him would have failed to communicate King’s presence to their superiors. No-one in the vicinity had tales to tell.
King still had the element of surprise on his side.
It seemed back-up wouldn’t make it in time. This was a highly volatile and extremely sensitive operation, as evidenced by Isla’s panic. King had doubted the validity of her concerns — which had now been confirmed in drastic fashion.
He looked at the elderly woman and smiled reassuringly. He pointed to himself, then to the peninsula.
I’ll get them.
Worry creased her features. She shook her head, tightening her lips into a scowl. Then she drew a finger across her throat, still shaking her head.
They will kill you.
He tapped the M4A1 carbine at his side, then spread his arms wide, highlighting their surroundings.
Highlighting the dead mercenaries.
‘You probably won’t understand this,’ he said, ‘but this happens a lot. I’m used to it. I’ll get them, don’t worry.’
Then he rested a hand on her frail shoulder and nodded again.
Confident.
Brazen, even.
With a gesture of farewell, he turned and made for the abandoned police sedans in front of the town hall. He planned to drive one of the beat-up vehicles until it could go no further — and then he would cover the rest of the distance on foot.
Where to, though?
He didn’t know. For as long as he could remember, he had focused on constant motion. It always seemed to provide results.
He assumed it would not fail him this time.
A thin hand seized his elbow, halting him in his tracks. He spun back to see the elderly woman shaking her head in vigorous fashion.
‘Nyet, nyet, nyet,’ she muttered disapprovingly. ‘Sledovat.’
He thought that meant follow.
He followed.
She led him down the trail, back into the village. Away from the swathe of destruction he had left amidst the now-empty town hall.
Clearly the sedan would not suffice.
He wondered what she would lead him to.
For cautionary purposes, he touched a hand to the carbine rifle at his side. Experience had taught him never to assume good intentions where there were none. For all he knew, the old lady could be a decoy leading him to a waiting ambush. A dozen new mercenaries, weapons at the ready, waiting for King to stumble around the corner and take him out for good.
That didn’t turn out to be the case.
Half a mile down the road — at which point the town hall disappeared behind them — the old woman hobbled down the makeshift driveway of a traditional Russian dwelling. King considered himself worldly, but he couldn’t recall the name for the huts.
She led him into the back of the property. He stepped out into a grassy field covered in a thick layer of snow. A thin wire fence trailed around sections of the perimeter, the metal rusting and jagged. Entire portions of the fence were missing. The land beyond was barren — sweeping plains of snow interspersed with a handful of dead trees.
Miles in the distance, he saw the land melt into the peninsula.
The woman shuffled over to a large patch of dirt directly behind the hut. The snow had been cleared to make way for a handful of items — a rusting stovetop over a cluster of dead coals, the burnt-out shell of an old car, and something the size of a refrigerator covered in a ragged tarpaulin sheet.
King motioned to the sheet. He thought he knew what lay underneath. ‘This?’
She nodded and stepped back, too old and frail to assist with the grunt work. King wrenched the tarpaulin away and stared at the half-battered Taiga-551 snowmobile that lay underneath.
Its front skis were rusting and jagged, with flecks of their material having snapped off long ago. The grip on the handlebars had peeled away and the tracks on the rear looked like they could use some maintenance.
King noted the khaki paint covering half the exterior. The rest had flaked away.
Russian military, he thought.
‘Where’d you get this?’ he said, staring at the woman.
She gave him a vacant stare, followed by an expressionless shrug. King realised she wouldn’t be able to communicate. Gestures and nods only got them so far. Maybe a late husband had scrounged it out of the post-Soviet leftovers and used it to travel from village to village for supplies.
He went with that theory.
Clearly, she thought it would prove more use than a car would.
He traced a path with his hand through the terrain out the back of the property, finishing at the base of the nearest mountains. A thin snow-covered valley led between them, curving away into shadow. He raised an eyebrow to ascertain whether he had the right idea.
The woman gave a solemn nod.
He sensed her hesitation. Maybe she had seen countless people taken by these forces. Packed up and carted off into the peninsula. Never to be seen again.
He would never know.
All he knew was movement.
So he strapped the duffel bag tight around his chest and clambered onto the worn seat of the snowmobile, feeling the chassis underneath him sag as it took the full brunt of his weight. He wondered how long it had been since the snowmobile had seen use.
He flicked the kill switch into the upward position, ensuring the motor would start, then yanked the pull cord until the engine coughed into life. It settled into a throaty chugging after a few moments of spluttering.
King met the gaze of the elderly woman across from him. He didn’t know her name. She had no idea who he was. She had watched him massacre a small army of thugs, and for some reason had decided to trust him with her life.
More than that, she had assisted him.
He would never be able to put into words how grateful he was.
They exchanged a knowing nod that transcended language barriers.
Thank you, King thought.
You’re welcome, she probably thought back.
He gripped the handlebars and set off, guiding the snowmobile across the small field and through a dozen-foot gap in the wire fence. The surroundings began to blur as he picked up speed. A thin smattering of trees passed by, and then he shot out into the plains.
Surrounded by nothingness.
He threw a glance back over his shoulder, squinting against the icy powder kicked up from the front skis. He saw the small hut and the surrounding forest fading into the horizon. He thought he could make out the shadowy form of the elderly lady, watching him just as intently as she had when he had first come across her.
He turned away from the scene.
Leaving behind almost a dozen dead bodies.
He didn’t care who found them. He didn’t care what official protocols were in place for such a discovery.
Hiding the dead would help nobody. Three of them were crooked cops. Sooner or later their co-workers would investigate their lack of contact and come across their bodies amongst a group of armed combatants.
A mob deal gone wrong, possibly.
King was unperturbed. By then, he was hoping to be off the continent.
He pushed the snowmobile’s motor to its maximum capacity, hunched low over the handlebars, and shot toward the looming mountains in the distance.
Toward war.
16
Sarah Grasso surfaced from unconsciousness all at once, like tearing her
head out of murky waters. Sight and sound and smell came back to her in an overwhelming jolt of sensation.
She lifted her eyelids and scrambled against cold hard concrete, fingernails scraping against the ground’s surface.
She had shaky memories. Like flashes of distorted stills.
The cramped metal interior of a vehicle.
Her shoulder pressed up against another motionless body.
A building tucked into the alcove of a cliff.
Stern men murmuring back and forth in Russian.
Then they had noticed her watching them from inside the vehicle…
…and one of them had moved in again with the rag.
Sweat dripped off her forehead as she cast a panicked look at her surroundings. She couldn’t make out much. The only light came trickling in through two stained windows. Cracks were spread across the glass like spiderwebs. There was no illumination in this room itself.
The room was a tiny box with a concrete floor and tin walls. Rectangular in shape. It stank of fuel and rot and rust. Some kind of storage shed.
She lay on her back in the centre of the room, her hands and feet bound together with tight leather straps. With a heave of effort she sat up, activating her abdominals in the process.
The cold hit her next. It seeped through her parka and leeched into her bones, so biting that her teeth began to chatter almost instantly. The sound was deafeningly loud in the silent space.
Someone stirred nearby.
‘Sarah?’ a confused voice whispered.
She turned her head — which took a considerable amount of effort — and saw Jessica sprawled across the concrete in the corner of the room. Her limbs were bound with the same straps as Sarah’s. She had shimmied along the floor and propped herself up against the far wall. One eye was swollen shut. The skin around the socket had turned an ugly shade of purple.
‘Fuck,’ Sarah coughed. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so,’ Jessica said. ‘Just drowsy.’
‘Oh my God,’ a third female voice whimpered.
Both women whipped their heads around to search for the source of the noise. Sarah spotted a figure tucked into the space between two sets of wooden shelving. The shelving was entirely bare, perhaps cleared out to restrict their access to anything they could use to cut the straps.