by Matt Rogers
Another resonating boom of thunder tore through the sky, making him flinch. He powered through the muck, sloshing it away from him. There were a hundred feet of open space between his snowmobile and the warehouse. He kept low, running in a crouch across the flat stretch. He zigzagged wildly from left to right along the way.
Just in case they had night vision optics trained on him.
But he doubted it — for a number of reasons.
If his memory was correct, he had killed fourteen men — excluding the three corrupt police officers that had likely been paid off. Six at the town hall. Eight at the outpost. He couldn’t imagine there would be dozens more to deal with. If there was, he would handle it, but even a mercenary force funded to the eyeballs had its limits. Employing more than twenty hired guns to stand around and do nothing was impractical and incredibly costly.
In a region this desolate, King guessed there were less than ten men left in the mine.
At least, he hoped.
The second factor was the man on the phone. The guy’s tone had been laced with something close to excitement, something palpable and tangible. He wanted to deal with King himself. He had been invigorated by the challenge. Maybe the man had previously held a career very similar to King’s. Spending his time holed up in an abandoned mine might have motivated him to seek out competition.
Or not.
Maybe they had fifteen weapons trained on him and all these thoughts bubbling in his head would soon cease to exist.
Heart pounding, he reached the front of the warehouse. A vast sliding door made of tin rested on weathered tracks.
Unlocked.
King gripped the handle with one hand and wrenched the door along its tracks, taking care to stay in its shadow. As soon as the door picked up momentum — grating as it slid — he let go and swept the barrel of the M4A1 around the corner.
He sliced the sights from left to right, clearing the space.
Empty.
He ducked inside the vast concrete space. Immediately the torrential downpour ceased, bombarding the roof of the warehouse instead. Water poured off him as he strode across the floor, running from his weapon, his clothing, his hair.
The chills set in.
The space was eerily quiet. Aside from an elevator shaft in the corner of the room, all the machinery had been stripped from the warehouse. The grooves and dents in the concrete floor signified heavy equipment that had rested in place for years.
‘Where is everyone?’ King muttered.
Still soaked to the core, he crossed to the mine cage and scrutinised it. It consisted of a rickety elevator made of steel, surrounded by a protective mesh cage. Beside the elevator, an enormous metal drum was fixed into the floor, connecting a thick suspension cable to the top of the elevator. He leant over the slim gap between the cage and the warehouse floor and peered straight down the mine shaft.
It descended into sheer blackness.
King wasn’t one to get claustrophobic. If he did, he never would have been able to continue.
He stepped across the gap and dropped to one knee inside the elevator. It swayed slightly as he entered, which sent a bolt of terror down his spine. He wondered how long since it had received proper maintenance…
A chunky control remote dangled from a cord near the cage’s entrance. King snatched it up and clutched it in a sweaty palm. There were only two buttons on the device. It had likely been installed for ease of use after the mining operation had ceased.
He stared at it. This was the point of no return. Whatever awaited below would not be pleasant. He still had the option to walk away. Once he was down there, there would be no turning back.
With the warehouse around him groaning as it was buffeted by howling winds and lashed by sheets of rain, King thumbed one of the buttons.
Gears whirred, and the cable unspooled.
With a jolt of motion, he descended into hell.
31
The journey down felt like it would go on forever.
King kept the same position the entire time — his back pressed up to the opposite end of the elevator, his M4A1 trained directly on the cage doors ahead. As soon as he hit the bottom, the doors would fly open and it was anyone’s guess what he would be faced with.
He was prepared for war.
He planned it out in his head. If he spotted hostiles waiting for him he would throw himself to the elevator floor, letting off three-round bursts until either he or his enemies died in a blaze of gunfire.
He fully expected for it to come down to a matter of milliseconds.
As the elevator sank further and further into the earth, the darkness wrapped around him. The only light came from a tiny flickering lightbulb swinging back and forth on the roof of the cage. King reversed the grip on his rifle and slammed the stock into the bulb, shattering the glass. It died out.
He had never experienced such sheer darkness. It was like going blind. He couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. The pressure in his ears built as he dropped thousands of feet below ground. They popped simultaneously after a few beats of sharp pain.
He retreated to the same position and lay in wait. It would prove an advantage when it came time for combat.
Then the cage shuddered. A moment later, it ground to a halt.
King heard the doors swing open.
He saw nothing. He heard nothing.
Sheer silence, and total darkness.
His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest at any second.
He let the silence reach an uncomfortable length. It unnerved him that there was no-one waiting for him. The mine was too quiet. This deep into the earth, all sounds of nature were non-existent.
No wind.
No rain.
No sun.
No wildlife.
Just rock and darkness.
He breathed as quietly as he could — yet even that felt like a freight train echoing off the walls. He shifted his hand on the rifle’s trigger guard, which he swore he could hear echo off his surroundings.
Eventually, his eyes became accustomed to the dark. He picked up the faintest source of light somewhere far in the distance. Nothing visible, but there was a slightest glow emanating off rock walls a hundred feet ahead.
It was a tunnel.
That much he could make out.
The rest was a mystery.
It took him what felt like an hour to make any sort of movement. Time after time he psyched himself up to hurry forward, but the tension kept him from action. He feared that any sort of noise would blow his cover.
What cover?
He had been invited into the mine. He was charging into a slaughterhouse, relying on instincts and the enemy’s underestimation of his skill-set to keep himself alive.
King scrambled to his feet. His footsteps felt like bombs going off in the tunnel, so loud and piercing against the silence that he flinched involuntarily, anticipating gunfire at any moment.
None came.
It felt like a horror-style video game — treading slowly down a dark path in search of hostiles, waiting for a jump scare. His heart thumped hard against his chest wall. Sweat broke out across his brow despite the chill.
He stepped out of the elevator cage and advanced into the mine.
His boots clattered against the rock, despite his best efforts to stay silent. After a moment of consideration, he decided to light the way ahead. He couldn’t see a thing, and one wrong step could send him tumbling down a mine shaft.
In the darkness, his mind conjured all kinds of chilling images. Reaching out with a foot. Finding nothing but thin air. Overbalancing. Falling to a grisly death in the depths of the Russian Far East.
He shivered involuntarily and reached for the flashlight on the underside of his rifle’s barrel.
It flooded the tunnel with artificial light, overwhelming in its intensity. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust — time which he spent acutely aware of the fact that he was impaired. Now was the opportunity
to put a bullet through his skull.
Then he regained his vision and scouted the ground ahead for signs of life.
It was a narrow tunnel with uneven walls of sheer rock, spiralling away into the darkness. There were no secret hiding places that he could see. He took a deep breath, switched the light off, and plunged himself back into darkness.
He set off, moving fast.
The tunnel ran for at least two hundred feet, twisting and turning through the earth. King imagined the hard labour involved in creating it.
Greed knows no boundaries, he thought again.
The glow grew stronger. Ahead he spotted the tunnel opening out into some kind of cavernous area. This far away, it was hard to ascertain exactly what he was looking at.
He pressed on.
Crouching low, he realised what it was.
The ore zone that had been excavated in search of minerals was the size of a small office building. Six or seven storeys high, it was the centre point to a plethora of similar tunnels at different levels. A grated metal walkway met this particular tunnel, running around the cavern walls. The entire space was illuminated by harsh spotlights fixed into the ceiling.
From his position a dozen feet inside the tunnel, King couldn’t see the majority of the space without exposing himself completely. He edged toward the walkway, barrel up, aiming at the space ahead.
Ready to react to the slightest sign of movement.
He heard something.
A whisper of movement.
Behind him.
So quiet and unnoticeable that he hesitated, unsure if his mind was playing tricks on him.
Then a sharp barrage of movement, all at once.
Rapid steps toward him.
He twisted at the waist, swinging the M4A1 one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, searching desperately for whatever had made the sound.
Too late.
32
Powerful arms wrapped around him, spiking his heart rate. They squeezed tight in a crushing bear hug.
King bucked and writhed, to no avail. His arms were pinned to his side.
To do that to a man of his size and strength took considerable power.
He was lifted off his feet. One moment his boots were touching rock — the next they were suspended in mid-air.
He was helpless.
His attacker took two massive strides — carrying King’s weight the entire time — then dropped him face-first towards the metal walkway outside the tunnel. King saw the grated flooring rushing at him.
He crashed into the steel.
Pain exploded across his face. He took the majority of the blow to his forehead, trying to avoid shattering his nose, knowing the consequences of such a debilitating injury. The result was his entire bodyweight — plus his attacker’s — driving into the floor. His chest hit the walkway next, wrenching the breath from his lungs.
Dealing with several waves of agony at the same time, King snatched for his rifle. It had been pinned awkwardly against his side by the crushing squeeze, and the impact with the walkway had knocked it away.
As he touched a finger to the stock, an enormous combat boot slammed down on the gun. In one motion the man kicked it off the edge of the walkway.
‘No weapons,’ he barked.
King scrambled desperately away from the man, putting distance between himself and another crushing blow. He righted himself, vision spinning.
Eyes blurring.
Head pounding.
The impact had done damage. He would find out shortly exactly how much.
His legs and arms felt weak. He stumbled to his feet, snatching at the thin railing running the length of the walkway. The other side was home to sheer rock wall. He got his boots underneath him and stared across the few feet of space between them.
‘I didn’t think it would be that easy,’ the man said.
It was the guy on the phone. The same man King had seen on the security footage. He was far bigger in person, at least an inch taller than King and roughly twenty pounds heavier.
All muscle.
Zero fat to be seen.
He was dressed in a tight-fitting, long-sleeved compression shirt and loose khaki pants tucked into heavy combat boots similar to King’s.
‘I’m Vadim Mikhailov,’ the guy said.
‘Jason King.’
‘Nice to know. Why did you come?’
‘You took some people that I’m responsible for.’
‘I did.’
‘I need them back.’
‘You’re not getting them back.’
‘Then I’ll keep killing your men.’
‘Oh…?’
With savage speed, Mikhailov covered the distance between them in a bull-rush, charging straight at King.
This time, King was ready.
He side-stepped, balling his right hand into a fist and slicing round with a right hook to the jaw. As soon as it connected against Mikhailov’s chin, King followed up with a devastating knee to the solar plexus. Both blows slammed home hard enough to turn his limbs numb. The two impacts echoed off the surrounding walls.
Mikhailov rolled with the force of the strikes. He stumbled backwards and slammed into the rock wall.
King hesitated.
Then Mikhailov bounced off the wall like it was nothing and threw a right uppercut with unimaginable speed.
King saw the blur of movement and suddenly knuckles crashed against his chin. He barely had time to tense up before the punch connected. It took him off his feet. For the second time in the space of twenty seconds, he sprawled to the metal in a tangle of limbs, reeling from the blow.
The lower half of his face went numb from the power behind the shot. King quickly realised he had bitten his tongue in the process. He spat a glob of blood onto the walkway and clambered to his feet.
‘This is good,’ Mikhailov said, rolling his wrists in small circles, his fists balled. ‘I haven’t felt this in some time. I missed it.’
‘You were a soldier?’ King said, panting for breath.
He was buying time. He wondered if Mikhailov realised. The pain in his neck and jaw threatened to buckle him at the knees. He needed a moment to compose himself.
Thankfully, Mikhailov took the bait.
He shook his head. ‘No. I worked for the government. But not a soldier.’
‘A killer?’
‘That’s more like it. A one-man wrecking machine. I dealt with the trickiest problems. Took care of the most brutal tasks.’
Wonder who that reminds me of, King thought.
‘It seems you are this man, too,’ Mikhailov said, echoing his sentiments.
King shrugged. ‘I think our governments are slightly different in the tasks we’re elected to carry out.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mikhailov said. ‘We are all murderers. It is all death.’
‘It’s not as black and white as that.’
Mikhailov raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah, you think you are a noble man?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘You are nothing. If you think you are doing good, you don’t know anything.’
‘You’re kidnapping health workers just trying to do their job,’ King said. ‘So you can take your advice and go fuck yourself with it.’
Mikhailov’s eyes flared and he charged.
King braced for impact.
He rolled with the first blow, taking a staggering kick to the mid-section. It knocked the wind out of him but he caught Mikhailov’s shin and wrenched him forwards, pulling him into range.
Before he could throw a single punch in retaliation, Mikhailov snatched two handfuls of his jacket and head-butted him square in the nose.
King recoiled backwards as needles of fire punched into his brain. He didn’t hear an audible crack. Best case scenario — nothing was broken. But the pain was undeniable, causing him to falter and release Mikhailov’s leg.
The big brute capitalised on it.
A fist thundered into King’s stomach, cracking against his
skin like a whip. He spluttered. The next punch hit him in the throat with pinpoint accuracy just as he went for a breath of air. He recoiled again, now completely on the defensive, stumbling in a blur of agony away from Mikhailov.
He couldn’t come back from this.
He knew that.
Fear shot through him — the kind of fear that didn’t strike him often. It was the realisation that nothing he could do would get him out of this situation. He had to run if he wanted to survive. He couldn’t beat this man in combat.
He had to level the playing field.
He surged down the walkway, ready to take off at a sprint.
Just before he was about to run, a powerful hand seized him by the side of the neck. It wrenched him back, playing with him like he was nothing.
Panic struck him.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mikhailov said. ‘Trying to give up already?’
King had no more time for words. He wasn’t even sure if they would come out properly — given the strikes he had taken to the torso. Instead he scrambled for air. He twisted at the waist and thundered a fist into Mikhailov’s side.
The man swatted it away like it was an irritating fly.
He seized King by the collar and tugged him forward so they were face-to-face. King saw rage in the man’s eyes. Anger that he would still bother to attempt more punches.
‘You throw one more strike and I’ll—’
King pushed away and kicked out, sending the heel of his combat boot scything through the air. It crashed into Mikhailov’s stomach hard enough to wind him. The big man doubled over, clearly in significant pain.
It was the first external response King had seen to his own strikes.
It lent him a burst of motivation.
In hindsight, he should have realised it had provided him with a window of opportunity. He could have fled down one of the tunnels, retreating into the depths of the mine to regroup and recharge.
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had come up short in a hand-to-hand fight — apart from a brawl in a Corsican airport with none other than Will Slater.
Surely you’re just off your game…
So he surged into Mikhailov’s range, taking advantage of the pain the man was suffering.