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

by Matt Rogers

  ‘We’re almost ready.’

  ‘You were supposed to go live half an hour ago.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I have heard that some of my colleagues are growing impatient. They need some entertainment.’

  ‘And that’s what we provide,’ Mikhailov said. ‘Now give us a moment. We’ll have everything up and running shortly.’

  ‘Why the delay?’

  ‘I had to check on one of our outposts,’ he said. ‘They’re responsible for maintaining the satellite dish on top of the mountain. So you can all tune in.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Everything is good,’ he lied. ‘No problems at all.’

  Mikhailov recalled watching each of the three women fall in turn. His pulse quickened in anger. He couldn’t let word get out that an intruder was stalking the peninsula.

  It would spell the death of him and everyone he knew.

  ‘Then get moving,’ the voice said. ‘You know who’s watching.’

  ‘On it,’ Mikhailov said.

  He shut the phone off and slammed the door to the elevator cage open, letting it rattle on its hinges. His temple throbbed and his hands shook. He had selected the Kamchatka Peninsula as the location for this endeavour because of its sheer isolation. The fact that some kind of soldier had found their way into the region spelled disaster.

  And located an outpost…

  He still hadn’t heard from the task force he’d sent to clean up the village. Twice he had tried to contact them, to no avail.

  If the mystery man had truly taken them all out — and finished off his crew at the outpost — then he would be difficult to deal with.

  He snatched up a rusty electronic remote attached to the side of the elevator and thumbed a large black button. An engine whirred and the steel cable suspending the elevator in the mine shaft began to unspool.

  The warehouse disappeared as Mikhailov sunk into the earth.

  As he paced back and forth impatiently across the cage — waiting to reach the sub-levels — an inkling of his past reared its head.

  He knew what it was.

  The concept of an enemy warrior in the region excited him, despite his best efforts to ignore the sensation.

  It was a challenge.

  He had not been challenged in quite some time.

  This was what he was born to do. The business ventures that currently took up most of his waking hours did nothing to get his blood rushing. He missed the thrill of combat. He missed the feeling of beating another man into submission. He missed the sheer power and dominance that came from such a feat.

  When the elevator slammed home at its first stop, Mikhailov shuffled out with a single resolution on his mind.

  Let him come.

  He hurried down a dark tunnel, passing uneven walls of sheer rock. The only light came from the other end of the path — a faint glow that emanated from somewhere far in the distance.

  Mikhailov pulled up short of the tunnel’s end, ducking into a side passage that ran through man-made corridors. He spotted a circular space that had been converted into a makeshift office and stepped inside.

  Two men in khaki gear greeted him with silent nods. They sat at opposite ends of a cluster of trestle tables that had been erected in the centre of the room. Atop the workspace rested a spread of high-technology gadgetry that provided a wired landline connection to the warehouse above, which in turn connected to the satellite dish that Mikhailov’s team had erected above the outpost a dozen miles away.

  It gave them high-speed internet access six thousand feet below the surface. It had been incredibly costly, but paramount to his operation.

  One of the men piped up. ‘Boss, he’s still there.’

  ‘At the outpost?’ Mikhailov said.

  The guy nodded.

  ‘So he really did kill all of them…’

  ‘He’s looking at the security footage as we speak.’

  Mikhailov smiled. ‘Good. That might anger him. I want to get inside his head. I was hoping he’d find it.’

  ‘He’s a big guy.’

  ‘Do you have a live feed?’

  The man nodded and gestured to the monitor in front of him. ‘See for yourself.’

  Mikhailov crossed the room and stopped behind the man’s chair. He peered at the screen.

  The enemy soldier sat in the outpost’s watchtower, hunched over one of the desktop monitors, scrolling through a list of folders. An assault rifle rested against his chair. He seemed fixated on the task at hand.

  ‘Does he know we’re watching him?’ Mikhailov said.

  The man shook his head. ‘Not a clue. It’s taking him a long time to find the footage.’

  ‘I made a gesture to the camera. Hopefully it provokes him.’

  On the screen, Mikhailov noticed a landline phone resting on the desk near the soldier. He pointed to it. ‘We have access to that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Wait for him to watch the footage,’ Mikhailov said. ‘Then I’ll give him a call. The quicker we can goad him into coming after us, the better.’

  The man threw a questioning glance over his shoulder. ‘Are you sure? You’ve seen what he’s done.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I want him here,’ Mikhailov said. ‘Consider it a personal challenge.’

  ‘To take him out?’

  ‘I want to break him.’

  29

  It took King seven minutes.

  He spent the majority of the time trawling through directories and sub-folders, all of which were labelled with a random combination of letters and numbers. When he finally stumbled across a folder of neatly-organised video logs, he opened several files until he found a grainy feed of the lodge’s interior — timestamped to today’s date.

  He fast-forwarded through hours of the eight occupants sitting around playing card games and flicking through television channels. Around half an hour before he arrived at the outpost, five of the men abruptly left.

  That was the search party, heading up the mountain to complete whatever task they had been delegated to carry out.

  King realised he had stormed the outpost at the most opportune time possible.

  Eight on one all at once would not have favoured him.

  He saw himself on the screen. The two mercenaries died in a blaze of gunfire, and King watched himself shepherd the three women into the lodge in fast-motion.

  Then he disappeared, and the trio were left alone in the room.

  A pit formed in King’s stomach. He knew what was coming.

  He took his finger off fast-forward.

  Even though the resolution left much to be desired and the footage had been recorded without audio, the fear was palpable. He watched Sarah and Carmen gather the handguns off the dead men. They both stared at the weapons like they were foreign objects.

  The trio retreated to the back of the room and fidgeted restlessly. Their eyes were trained on the door.

  A few minutes later, the door crashed off its hinges. A man stepped into the room — roughly the same size as King, measured in his movements. They had a noiseless conversation. King was oblivious to the topic.

  Then Sarah raised her weapon and attempted to fire.

  King bowed his head. She’d left the safety on. Carmen tried in turn, with equally dismal results.

  The man in the doorway — hovering directly below the security camera — withdrew a handgun. He levelled the barrel at the three women and delivered a trio of clinical shots, one after the other.

  All headshots.

  All fatal.

  First Sarah dropped, then Carmen, then Jessica. The man noted his handiwork and tucked the gun back into its holster. He turned and stared up at the camera.

  As if he was aware that King was watching.

  The face was sharply defined, with high cheekbones and a straight hairline. The man’s hair was cut close to the skull — jet black in colour. The skin underneath one eye was twisted and mangled horrifically — an old scar, u
ncared for. His eyes were cold.

  He sported a knowing smirk, keeping his gaze locked onto the security camera for a significant length of time. The man raised a hand toward the lens, palm facing away from it.

  He beckoned with four fingers, inviting King to pursue him.

  Then he left the lodge as abruptly as he had arrived, storming out into the night.

  King sat in stunned silence, fully aware of the bait that the man had set. The guy knew the emotional reaction King was likely to have to the footage. He had preyed on that.

  Staring into space, King tried to keep a level head. Objectively, he had no obligation to continue. Isla had sent him on a personal endeavour that had gone horrendously wrong. The reason for his presence in Russia — Isla’s sister — was no longer a factor. Any action he took from this point onward would be entirely voluntary, which meant he would be acting as a rogue operative. If word got out of his actions, there would be hell to pay.

  He now had full knowledge that the mission had no ties to the government he worked for.

  If he continued, it was on him.

  The landline phone on the desk beside him shrilled in its holder.

  King jolted out of his stupor, shocked by the sudden burst of noise. He stared at the shrieking device. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Someone wanted to talk…

  He lifted the phone to his ear, keeping his mouth shut. Despite his best efforts, his hand shook from a combination of anger and unease.

  ‘I see you got my message,’ a male voice said in accented English, deep and sinister in its tone.

  ‘You’re the one that killed them?’ King said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know why I’m here?’

  ‘I can guess. I’ve been trying to contact a few of my men. I’m having trouble.’

  ‘They’re dead. They’re all dead. Every man you sent to the village, the three cops, all the people at this outpost.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’re trying to coax me into coming for you,’ King said. ‘Trying to get me to make mistakes. I see it.’

  ‘I think I’ve succeeded,’ the man said. ‘I could hang up this phone right now and you would come after me. I can hear it in your voice. You’re furious. And you are not very good at hiding it.’

  King didn’t respond.

  ‘You are American. Did your government send you?’

  King stayed quiet.

  ‘You don’t know who I work for,’ the man said. ‘This could have serious ramifications. An American should not be sniffing around in places he’s not wanted.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘You should have seen the looks on their faces when I killed them.’

  King’s fingers gripped the receiver tighter. His knuckles ran white. He ground his teeth together, riding out the wave of suppressed rage.

  ‘So you want me to come after you?’ he said. ‘You’ll have your men ready? That’s what this is?’

  The man laughed cruelly. ‘It appears my men aren’t very effective against you. I’ll deal with you myself. It’s been a while since I’ve been provoked.’

  ‘I’m provoking you?’

  ‘You’ve set me back, I won’t lie. Over a dozen of my men are dead. Hard-working opportunists with combat experience. They busted their asses to make a good wage. So I’ll take pleasure in killing you myself.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Head down to the forest and continue north. You’ll pass between another pair of mountains. The mine is in the shadow of Shiveluch Volcano. You will not miss it.’

  ‘What if I leave? I could send an entire battalion to clean things up.’

  ‘You know the consequences of that,’ the man said. ‘You and I both do not want to start a third World War. That doesn’t benefit anyone. You want to deal with this quietly. Get your men back and leave without anyone knowing. You think you can, too. I can tell. You’re confident.’

  ‘See you soon,’ King said.

  He slammed the phone back into its cradle and gathered up the carbine rifle by his side. There was nothing left to achieve at the outpost.

  He had two options.

  He could head south and organise a rendezvous with Isla to inform her of the devastating news and forget he had ever set foot in the Russian Far East. They would leave the disappearance of the health workers to the proper authorities, waiting until alarms were raised naturally.

  But by then, he couldn’t imagine what fate the remaining seven workers would have suffered.

  Or he could head north, knowingly walking into the trap that had no doubt been set for him.

  It was an easy decision. He had never willingly left innocent people to suffer. He would rather be dead than live with the knowledge that he’d abandoned them. So King clambered down the watchtower’s ladder and headed for the same snowmobile he’d arrived on.

  No duffel bag.

  No supplies.

  A M4A1 carbine assault rifle slung across one shoulder and two spare magazines in his breast pockets.

  He swung a leg over the snowmobile and fired it up. He stared at the lodge one final time, where the three health workers lay dead.

  They’d never provoked anyone.

  He let the anger fuel him. Then he twisted the handlebars and began the precarious journey down the side of the mountain.

  30

  By the time he made it to the forest floor, a storm had blown in from the east.

  The canopy of branches above his head protected him from the worst of the weather. Torrential rain lashed against the treetops. It was the first downpour he had experienced in the region.

  Isla had warned him of the weather’s severity.

  Water poured off the trees around him, soaking him to the bone in seconds. Lightning flashed intermittently in the sky above, followed by sharp cracks of thunder.

  He steered the snowmobile through the darkness, squinting against the rainwater pouring down his face. He began to shiver uncontrollably. Tremors ran down his spine. He lost most of the feeling in his hands as they chilled underneath his gloves.

  He went numb to the elements.

  Teeth chattering, he burst out of the forest after five minutes of claustrophobic travel. The man on the other end of the phone had not been lying. Two mountains of similar height lay directly ahead. The valley between them was devoid of trees or vegetation. Rock formations dotted the landscape. The snowmobile’s headlight pierced across the ground for a hundred feet, then faded into nothingness.

  The dark landscape beckoned.

  King felt real fear course through him. He grew hesitant, slowing the snowmobile to a crawl. Either his surroundings had unnerved him, or the sheer scale of the task at hand had begun to set in. It didn’t matter either way. His own emotions had little to do with his actions. He had always managed to achieve that balance.

  Selective attention to his own feelings.

  An intense focus on what needed to be achieved.

  He applied the throttle and pressed on, speeding across the open plain with icy wind buffeting his face and sheets of heavy rain flowing off him in rivulets.

  Tune it out, he thought. None of it matters.

  The mountains swallowed him up, filling his peripheral vision with two giant slopes ascending into the clouds.

  The front skis hit a deep layer of rainwater that had flowed down from a nearby slope of rock. The rear tracks slid out, biting for purchase. King blanched as he fought for control, knowing that one wrong turn could prove fatal.

  He made it through to the land beyond the mountains, growing acutely aware of his distance from civilisation. There was no-one to help him out here. Isla had no idea of his location. She had been tracking him via the GPS in the duffel bag — which now lay at the bottom of a cliff amongst the wreckage of a snowmobile.

  He began to regret tossing the earpiece away with each passing second.

  He roared out onto another desolate plain, this one dotted with patches of forest. It was
too dark to make out exactly what lay ahead. In a landscape of this size, the sole headlight on the front of his vehicle showed just how insignificant he was amidst the peninsula.

  A ripple of lightning flared on the horizon, silhouetting a mountain so enormous that King had trouble processing what he could see.

  Shiveluch Volcano.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered as the scale of the volcano dawned on him.

  At its peak, it soared at least ten thousand feet into the air. Another lightning strike arced through the night sky and King realised the volcano was at least thirty miles in the distance. It dwarfed everything in sight, so gargantuan that King felt a distinct sense of panic in his chest. He pressed it down, ignoring the sensation.

  He kept his eyes peeled for anything resembling a mine.

  Twenty minutes later he came across the warehouse, constructed in the shadow of a towering cliff-face. It had clearly been abandoned years ago by those looking for resources in the earth. King couldn’t imagine why anyone would construct a mine in such close proximity to an active volcano — which had likely been the reason for its desertion.

  Greed, he thought.

  He had seen enough of it for one lifetime. Men and women careless for their own safety or the safety of others. Those who were only interested in dollar signs. He reminisced to a brief period of his life he had spent in the backwoods of Australia.

  Then Venezuela.

  Then Corsica.

  Then Egypt.

  The adversaries he’d faced in each region all had one thing in common.

  Greed.

  A lust for money or power.

  It came in many forms.

  King approached the warehouse at a crawl, taking care not to rev his engine too hard at risk of attracting attention.

  Not that it mattered — the storm drowned out all noises. There could be a horde of mercenaries firing on him and he would be none the wiser.

  He disembarked the vehicle a few hundred feet away from the reinforced tin building, killing the engine between a cluster of trees. He landed in a thick layer of sludge — millions of gallons of falling rainwater had coagulated the snow, turning it to mush.

  Approaching with stealth would not be on the agenda.