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

by Matt Rogers

  ‘Don’t,’ Eli said. ‘Don’t make me fight back, man. We’re better than this.’

  All the colour had drained from both their faces. Seth got to his feet. He balled his fists and clenched his teeth.

  King had seen enough.

  It didn’t matter what the extent of his injuries were. He had to put a stop to this before one man lay dead and the other was scarred for life. He didn’t care if he died in the process.

  He couldn’t let this unfold.

  It was so sick and twisted that he felt like fainting.

  He shrank a step back into the mine, wondering how he could throw Mikhailov off.

  Then he had an idea. The man been terrified of his audience discovering that there was trouble afoot. Perhaps there were personal details stored on hard drives in the mine. Details that would cost careers and lives. If a rogue agent managed to get his hands on them…

  ‘Mikhailov!’ King roared at the top of his lungs. It tore through the cavern, freezing everyone in place. He kept to the shadows and put on his best Russian accent. ‘All our men are dead! The American killed them! He’s looking through the computers!’

  Mikhailov would identify the ruse in an instant.

  But his viewers wouldn’t.

  As it was a live stream, King imagined there was no tape delay. The audio would have reached them — whoever they were. They would know that something was awry.

  Hidden inside the mouth of the tunnel, King had no view of Mikhailov’s reaction. Hopefully, the man was shitting his pants.

  King turned and sprinted back into the depths of the sub-levels.

  35

  This time, the blind fumbling proved easier to stomach. King had spent enough time without vision in the claustrophobic tunnels to have grown somewhat used to the sensation.

  He followed a trail through the maze of sub-levels, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that warned him not to get lost.

  Dying of starvation, unable to find his bearings, clawing at the walls.

  The idea sent shivers down his spine.

  He moved methodically, retreating when he noticed the ground ascending. Reaching the ground floor was top priority. There, he could improvise.

  They were storing the prisoners somewhere on that level.

  That was all he needed to know.

  Some time later, just when he thought he might have to backtrack and concede defeat for now, his right hand struck something fixed into the wall.

  A door.

  He ran his hand silently along the steel. It was the first man-made structure he had come across inside the mine, having grown so accustomed to the smooth rock against his palm that the texture made him jolt in surprise. A thin line of yellow light filtered underneath the door, barely perceptible.

  He paused and listened.

  Nothing audible came from the other side. For all he knew, he could be walking into a death trap. He fully expected to meet a cluster of automatic weapons on the other side, all aimed at his head.

  Instincts.

  He reached for the handle, wrenched the door open and powered into the room.

  His eyes adjusted to the light faster, now used to alternating between total darkness and harsh artificial bulbs. He had entered some kind of production room at ground level, dimly lit by overhead LEDs. Across one wall, a long pane of one-way bulletproof glass faced out across the cavern floor, providing an unimpeded view of what took place in the makeshift arena.

  The production room housed an array of slim computer monitors — each connected to a separate camera feed. Papers and folders were strewn across the desks. It was a mess.

  There were two men in the room. A bald tattooed mercenary in a tattered singlet faced away from the door, in the process of opening a cabinet. The British guy with the receding hair that King had seen earlier was hunched over the monitors, scrutinising the different camera feeds. He had obviously been taken by surprise by the pause in the action after King’s outburst.

  This would take him by surprise even more.

  King darted around the cluster of tables in the centre of the room and smashed a boot into the small of the mercenary’s back. The guy hadn’t been expecting anything. He careered into the metal cabinet face-first, breaking his nose on the hard surface.

  King followed up immediately with a right hook from behind. His fist swung around the side of the mercenary’s head and crunched his chin, snapping his neck around.

  Lights out.

  The guy dropped, taking out one of the flimsy tables in the process. The explosion of noise caused the British guy to scramble out of his seat, terrified into action by the commotion.

  King imagined the man was there as a production assistant as opposed to muscle. In fact, it seemed like the guy had never been in a fight in his life. He froze like a deer in the headlights when he saw King.

  King despised him immediately.

  The guy was a coward — only used to watching the terror from afar.

  King noticed an identical MP-443 Grach handgun on the table between them.

  ‘That yours?’ he said.

  The British guy faltered.

  ‘For your own protection?’ King said.

  No response.

  ‘You were probably too distracted by what was going on out there,’ King said. ‘Weren’t expecting me to come charging in. Thought you were safe?’

  The provocation got to the man. He squirmed on the spot, visibly sweating. His face had turned pale. A thin sheen of perspiration coated his features.

  ‘Do it,’ King said. ‘Give it your best shot.’

  The guy took the bait. He tensed up like a coiled spring, his intentions so obvious that he might as well have held up a sign announcing his next move. He made a dive for the pistol, feet slipping on the cold floor as he did so.

  King pounced, snatching the gun off the table a moment before the British guy got to it. As soon as he had control of the weapon the man dropped to his knees. He spread his palms wide and tucked them behind his head, effectively surrendering before King could shoot him.

  King didn’t care.

  The thought of the man organising dozens of fights to the death and watching in glee from this sheltered production room made him sick. He evidently had no concern for the lives he had ruined. Mikhailov was likely paying him a large salary to ensure the live stream operated smoothly.

  King flicked the safety off the weapon and shot the man through the top of the head.

  A quick death.

  The guy had been staring at the floor, unaware of what was coming. Merciful, all things considered. The guy deserved to suffer the same fate as the innocent civilians he had watched beat each other to a bloody pulp for however long this operation had been going on for.

  Consider yourself lucky, King thought.

  Now alone in the production room, he looked through the pane of one-way glass for the first time, taking in the view of the cavern floor.

  His stomach fell.

  There was no sign of Mikhailov. Instead, two bodies lay motionless in the centre of the space. Their heads rested in bloody pools, sharply illuminated by the floodlights trained on the ground.

  Seth and Eli.

  Mikhailov had opted to gun them down instead of letting the fight play out. King’s attempt at an intervention must have unnerved the man. Instead of shepherding the two prisoners into a locked room and saving their fight for later, he had disposed of them. Mikhailov was likely stalking the tunnels of the mine with his thugs, searching desperately for King before he could ruin their production any more.

  King didn’t move. He watched the pair of corpses for a long time, hoping for some sign of life. The floodlights infuriated him. Their bright glow stripped the dead men of their dignity, exposing them in stark detail to the viewers on the other end of the cameras.

  Unable to suppress it, King felt anger rising in his chest. He hoped Mikhailov came for him. Even with a broken wrist and a spinning head, he wanted nothing more than to get
his hands on the man. Mikhailov was ruthless.

  King would do whatever it took to eliminate him before he could lay a finger on the other five hostages.

  He would not let this operation become a total failure.

  Charged with a newfound energy, he turned his attention to the bank of monitors in front of him. Each displayed a different angle of the two corpses — some had wider lenses, some were zoomed right up to their bloody features. King spotted the cylindrical bullet hole in the side of each man’s skull.

  He hoped they hadn’t started to fight before Mikhailov shot them down. He hoped they had kept their dignity. The dehumanisation of being forced to kill a friend would have been horrendous.

  He heard something.

  A footstep.

  The scuffle of heel on rock.

  It echoed faintly in through the open doorway, floating down from the tunnel beyond. King saw the faint white shimmer of a distant flashlight. He skirted to the doorway and pressed himself against the rock wall, listening intently.

  The shuffle of bodies became clearer. There was a search party heading for the production room. They were trying to stay silent, but King heard everything.

  They would have been drawn to the sound of unsuppressed gunshots.

  Surprisingly, King’s heart rate calmed.

  He was outnumbered, with no idea as to how many men were approaching, or how heavily armed they were. One of his arms was completely useless, and his vision swam from a pounding headache behind his eyes.

  But none of that mattered. He glanced down at the MP-443 Grach in his hand.

  He had a gun.

  36

  Determination took over. His veins turned to ice. The fog of incoherence lifted momentarily as his reflexes sharpened and his instincts heightened.

  He adjusted his grip on the handgun and held his breath.

  There were three men approaching. He singled out their footsteps in turn, paying attention to every sliver of audible noise. Two of them advanced rapidly, hustling towards his position. There was the faint scuffle of a third man a few feet behind, taking up the rear of the party.

  An inverted triangle, all with their guns trained on the door, no doubt.

  King glanced at the lifeless body of the British tech guy. He was slim, and short. King estimated his bodyweight at somewhere around one-hundred-and-sixty pounds.

  Manageable.

  Taking care not to grunt from the pain, he switched hands with the MP-443, cradling it delicately in his swollen left palm. Ignoring the throbbing, he silently crept over to the corpse and wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the back of the guy’s shirt.

  With two bounding steps and a heave of exertion, he tossed the limp body through the open doorway.

  Having only died minutes previously, rigor mortis had yet to set in. The corpse slapped into the opposite wall of the tunnel in a tangle of gangly limbs. King heard two sharp intakes of breath in unison, followed by a barrage of unsuppressed gunfire a half-second later. As he suspected, the reaction speed and professionalism of the mercenaries had dulled after so much time spent in isolation, without regular training.

  They’d twitched and jumped at the first sign of life.

  King switched the Grach back to his good hand and leant round the doorway, using the muzzle flare from the panicked rifle bursts to identify the two silhouettes in the dark tunnel. He spotted the pair of hulking forms, which was all that was required in the confined space.

  As the tunnel plunged back into darkness he fired four shots, clinical and measured.

  Tap-tap, tap-tap.

  Then he ducked back into the production room, avoiding any potential retaliation.

  He heard two bodies thump into the hard rock.

  If his hearing was correct, there was still one man left to dispatch. He crouched low — heart now pounding in his chest — training the MP-443 Grach on the doorway. He hoped the last man would come charging in foolishly. He’d lost count of the number of times his enemies had let their adrenalin take over, which always culminated in mistakes.

  That turned out not to be the case.

  ‘Jason,’ a deep voice boomed, resonating in from the tunnel. ‘You’re causing me a lot of trouble.’

  Mikhailov.

  The man’s tone had been affected by his damaged jaw, which he had covered up impeccably whilst hosting the live stream. Now his voice sounded stuffy and laboured. Perhaps his mouth was beginning to swell.

  ‘I’m giving you five seconds to give yourself up,’ Mikhailov said. ‘Or I’ll leave and murder the other five men — just like I did to Seth and Eli. You don’t want that, do you?’

  King stayed quiet.

  His mind whirred, racing through the options available. Without a doubt, Mikhailov had an automatic weapon fixed on the doorway, ready to fire the second King stepped through. He quickly crossed off a list of ideas.

  He would lose a stand-off — that much was certain. Mikhailov had more than proven himself as an elite combat operative, and King imagined that the man had retained all the weapons training of his past. That put them on roughly equal footing — and in that case, an automatic rifle beat a handgun nine times out of ten.

  ‘Five,’ Mikhailov said, initiating a countdown.

  King turned, surveying the room. There were no other weapons visible — nothing to give him the advantage he so desperately needed. Aside from erecting a barricade of overturned furniture, he couldn’t figure out a way to gain the upper hand.

  Perhaps it would have to come down to a matter of reflexes.

  ‘Four.’

  Ordinarily, he had full faith in his ability to react faster than anyone else.

  Here, he wasn’t so sure.

  The beating he had suffered on the walkway made him hesitate. It was a mental barrier, plaguing him with doubt. He felt slow. Sluggish.

  ‘Three.’

  By the cabinet on the opposite wall, King picked up a tremor of movement. It was barely noticeable, but his eyes darted to it.

  The thug he’d knocked unconscious had stirred. King knew a devastating concussion when he saw one, and this man had been on the receiving end of an expertly-placed strike. He would have a headache for the next few days, and long-term effects for up to six months. One of his hands resting on the rock floor twitched slightly, the muscles seizing as he surfaced from unconsciousness.

  Then the man’s head lifted off the ground.

  His eyes were half-closed and his head dipped and rose with each breath. He wasn’t fully aware of his surroundings, locked in a semi-conscious state as his senses returned.

  ‘Two.’

  King sensed an opportunity.

  He skirted across the room, keeping low, making as little noise as he possibly could. Without a word he hauled the mercenary to his feet. The guy obeyed silently, too disoriented to be fully aware of his surroundings. King looped an arm around the guy’s back to stabilise him and helped him stumble towards the doorway.

  ‘One.’

  ‘Coming out now,’ King said. ‘Just don’t hurt my friends.’

  Mikhailov laughed cruelly. ‘I’ll do whatever I want to them. Two of them are lying dead in the arena. I’m sure you saw that. How did that make you—?’

  At that moment, King disentangled himself from the mercenary and thrust the guy forward. Barely conscious, the man stumbled through into the tunnel beyond. He hadn’t a clue as to his location. The guy swayed off-balance and walked blindly in the direction of Mikhailov’s voice.

  King followed him out.

  In the lowlight, confusion reigned. Mikhailov would see the man stumble out of the doorway, but it would take him a second to register his identity. With the only artificial light coming from the production room, everyone who exited was backlit by the glow.

  Just a black silhouette against a bright background.

  King sprawled stomach-first across the ground behind the mercenary. He raised the MP-443 Grach to aim between the semi-conscious guy’s legs and fired
six times down the tunnel, unloading the clip. He only had a second or two of hesitation to capitalise on, so he opted to use all the ammunition he had in hopes of succeeding.

  All or nothing.

  Mikhailov grunted audibly and King heard his boots slide out on the rock. He had been thrown backwards by whichever rounds had slammed home.

  King wasted no time. If Mikhailov wasn’t dead, he was still dangerous.

  King scrambled to his feet and charged down the tunnel. The mercenary had ducked his head as the gunfire tore through the space around him. He’d frozen in place, still not cognitive, terrified by the loud outburst of light and sound.

  King dropped his shoulder and smashed into the back of the guy, throwing him forward off his feet. The man came down awkwardly on top of Mikhailov. King couldn’t see much, but he heard a low curse as Mikhailov found himself pinned to the tunnel floor.

  King followed the mercenary down, crushing Mikhailov’s weight under another body. The point of the manoeuvre was to pin the man’s arms down, preventing any last-ditch efforts to squeeze off return fire. King heard Mikhailov struggling against the deadweight on top of him, desperately trying to wrench his weapon free.

  By sound alone, King located Mikhailov’s rifle.

  He reached down, letting go of his handgun and tossing it behind him in the process. Suddenly vulnerable, he snatched at the assault rifle, wrapping his good hand around the gun’s stock. He wrenched with primal energy, tearing it free from Mikhailov’s grip.

  He threw that behind him too, eliminating all weapons from the equation.

  Silence settled over the tunnel.

  King got to his feet and hurled the mercenary aside. The dazed man collapsed in a heap on one side of the tunnel, unmoving.

  Mikhailov lay on the tunnel floor, panting heavily. The extent of his wounds were unclear. King couldn’t see much in the lowlight. He hauled Mikhailov to his feet and hustled him into the production room.

  With a single heave, he dumped the man onto the cluster of tables in the centre of the room. Mikhailov offered no resistance. The big man slammed onto the table back-first and lay still, his chest rising and falling in rasping gasps of air.