by Matt Rogers
The fact that he hadn’t had the chance to die in combat crushed his morale.
And it would not be a faceless mercenary wearing a balaclava to do it.
It would be Mikhailov.
The one man who he wished nothing but death upon.
Through half-closed eyes he got a proper look at Mikhailov for the first time. The man was in similarly terrible shape. The blood had drained from his face, to the point where his skin had turned a mottled grey. It leaked from various bullet wounds which he hadn’t had the chance to clean yet. As a result, his tattered uniform was coated in his own blood from head to toe.
He looked demonic, like something out of a horror movie.
Mikhailov stared around the room with rabid eyes, crazed by his injuries. His gaze flitted from man to man, sizing up the health workers, checking for weapons, satisfied that he had managed to gain the upper hand.
‘You really think you could win?’ he said to King.
King shook his head. ‘No.’
‘But you still marched forward anyway.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You faced your death like a man.’
King said nothing.
‘I admire that,’ Mikhailov said. ‘At least you can die with some dignity.’
The big man turned to the party of health workers, leering at them. ‘As for you five. Fuck, you have caused me some issues. You will die slowly. Pathetically. I’ll enjoy it.’
‘What makes you think you’ll be the one to do it?’ King said.
Mikhailov turned to him. ‘What?’
‘You told me yourself. The viewers aren’t going to be happy that you compromised their privacy. You’ll die alongside us.’
‘They might kill me. But I have time. Time to prepare.’
‘No you don’t.’
Mikhailov hesitated.
‘Didn’t you hear the elevator arrive?’ King said.
‘You’re bluffing.’
King laughed.
It seemed that Mikhailov’s hearing had been affected by his wounds. The man was likely swimming in a state of delirium — just as King was. Clawing along with the satisfaction that he would get the last laugh. He thought he would be the one to put a bullet into King’s skull.
‘You haven’t been in contact with anyone since you left the mine,’ King said, vocalising his realisation. ‘You’ve been hiding up top. Licking your wounds. Scared to get in touch with your superiors because they’ll kill you for it.’
Mikhailov stared at him blankly, his face just as pale as before.
‘You have no idea what’s going on,’ King said. ‘They’re already sending teams of mercenaries into the mine. I’ve dealt with one already.’
The commotion outside the production room reached a fever pitch. Rapid footsteps echoed down the tunnel as the second hit squad descended on them.
‘Here’s one now,’ King muttered. ‘Good luck talking your way out of this.’
They swarmed in through the open doorway like wraiths, silent and determined. King had been close in his initial estimate. Eight men filed into the room one-by-one, each dressed identically to their previous comrades. They were big, imposing, hard men — wearing fatigued Russian military uniform, their faces all covered by woollen balaclavas. The masks exposed nothing but their cruel eyes, eyes that passed clinically over the room, sizing up the situation.
There was no need to open fire just yet.
Their manpower was too strong.
All eight men wielded giant Kalashnikov assault rifles, all state-of-the-art, all brand new. As Mikhailov had confirmed before, the viewers had money to spare. The men fanned out inside the suddenly cramped room, training the barrels of their weapons on its occupants.
Mikhailov watched them enter with wide eyes. He let out a burst of panicked Russian, attempting to reason with the mercenaries. They disregarded him. One of them raised his Kalashnikov silently and pressed it against the back of Mikhailov’s skull. The man muttered something low and threatening.
A command.
Mikhailov complied, dropping his weapon. He fell to his knees, landing heavily against the rock floor.
King scoffed and closed his eyes. ‘You die with us, my friend.’
The mercenary closest to him barked an order in Russian and aimed a Kalashnikov at the side of his head. King understood.
Shut up.
He slumped into the chair, forcing himself not to hyperventilate. He couldn’t fight back. There were too many of them. Even if he killed one, or two, or three, the rest would gun him down in a heartbeat.
In his current state, he didn’t think he could even manage getting out of his chair.
He let the pain in, hoping that would take him before the Russians could. Maintaining an illusion of calm was his only objective. He wanted the health workers to die as painlessly as possible. If they didn’t see him panicking, they might maintain some semblance of hope.
One of the masked men moved behind King’s chair and seized him by the throat, clasping a gloved hand against his neck — which had already turned purple from the choke hold applied hours earlier. He yanked King into an upright position in the chair.
King spluttered, all his bones aching. He closed his eyes and waited for the killing shot through the top of his head.
That was the most effective way to do it.
The mercenary leant down and muttered in his ear, ‘You might need this.’
King felt cold steel in his right palm.
He froze.
He had just been passed a weapon…
But that wasn’t what made him hesitate. He had been shocked by the voice.
It wasn’t Russian. He recognised the accent.
American.
‘What the fuck,’ he muttered through split lips.
Will Slater — his features still covered by the thick balaclava — lurched up and unleashed a storm of gunfire upon the room.
48
Pandemonium struck.
In the confined space, the unsuppressed Kalashnikov rounds were deafening. King lost his hearing within the first three shots — but he didn’t need it to survive.
He surged forward with the fully-loaded MP-443 Grach that Slater had placed in his hand a second earlier. Newfound energy seized him, invigorating him.
He gunned Mikhailov down first.
The brute only had time to widen his eyes at the revelation before King brought the barrel of his pistol up and blasted his forehead into pulp. Mikhailov collapsed to the floor, unequivocally dead.
The four mercenaries around him — two on each side — jolted and jerked as lead ripped through their delicate skin. Slater unloaded his weapon with the clinical precision of an elite soldier.
Two shots per man, targeting the neck and face, causing irreparable damage to everything his bullets touched.
Health workers and mercenaries alike dove for cover.
King sprawled onto the ground, still capitalising on the confusion. He fired twice more, gunning down the man closest to him. The guy keeled over, dropping his weapon in the process. In a single swift manoeuvre King caught his Kalashnikov in the air and turned it on the remaining mercenaries.
He and Slater fired at the same time — two sets of pinpoint-accurate automatic gunfire that decimated the last two men. They didn’t even have time to return fire. Bullets plastered the wall behind them, with the rest slicing through internal organs and tissue.
They fell in unison.
The deafening gunfire ceased, replaced with barrel smoke and an intense ringing in King’s ears. He staggered, shocked by what had unfolded. The carnage had begun so quickly that he hadn’t had time to process anything. Now, he stood in silence and registered the chaos that had taken place.
Eight men — including Mikhailov — were dead, their vital organs torn to shreds by his and Slater’s rounds. The health workers had flattened themselves to the ground, pressing their hands over their heads in a vain attempt to protect themselves from crossfire.
>
It had worked.
For a fleeting, terrifying moment, King thought they were dead. Then they lifted their heads — one by one — surveying the scene in stunned awe.
King opened his mouth to reassure them, but he had gone temporarily deaf from the blistering reports. He flapped his lips like a dying fish, still stunned.
He turned to Slater.
The man peeled off his balaclava, revealing the same pearly white teeth and high cheekbones that he remembered from Corsica. King hadn’t seen him since he had commandeered a private chopper and fled from Black Force over a month ago.
Slater said something, but all King heard was a high-pitched whining in his ears. A wave of nausea overwhelmed him and he dropped back into the same chair, breathing hard.
The adrenalin of the shootout had come from somewhere primal. There hadn’t been a shred of energy in his body when Slater handed him the pistol. He had called on his final reserves, drawing from a place deep inside his subconscious to aid him one last time.
Now, he had nothing left in the tank.
The tinnitus dulled, providing slight relief. The whining had become near unbearable, piercing into his skull with all the grace of a charging bull. Now it settled, and certain sounds returned to the edge of his hearing.
Slater crouched in front of him. King tried to focus on the man but his sight had seemingly lost its ability to function properly. Blurry shapes swam on the edges of his vision.
‘You’re in bad shape,’ he heard Slater say.
‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Not good.’
‘Let’s get you lot out of here.’
King paused. ‘How… did you get here?’
‘I hijacked a private jet at V.C. Bird International Airport. A Gulfstream. The pilots were refuelling for their client — some kind of energy tycoon. We barely made it off the ground — ATC suspected foul play as soon as we requested to take off early.’
‘You flew straight here?’
‘They had enough fuel. And — thankfully — an emergency parachute on board. I left the aircraft over the exact co-ordinates you gave me. Landed a mile away, in the middle of nowhere. Rough landing, too…’
‘They saw you coming?’
‘No-one was watching.’
‘Your uniform,’ King muttered, gesturing to the dull khakis Slater was dressed in. The kit was identical to the dead mercenaries’ outfits.
‘Took me twenty minutes to find the place. By that point, this lot had arrived. They weren’t paying attention to approaching combatants. All of them were focused on gearing up for the descent. Preparing for combat. They didn’t expect a thing.’
‘How’d you do it?’
‘One of them had stepped away from the rest of the group. He lit up a cigarette — psyching himself up for the big attack, probably. I dealt with him and changed clothes.’
‘Goddamn…’
‘It was chaos up there — you should have seen it. They were all shitting their pants. Had you already killed some of them?’
‘Five men,’ King said softly. ‘The first team they sent in. They didn’t come back.’
‘That unnerved them,’ Slater said. ‘From what I could gather, they’d been sent with minimal orders from Moscow. All they knew was that the mine had to be cleared. Everyone had to be killed.’
‘So you mingled?’
‘It didn’t take long. I hovered around until they decided to head in. I couldn’t kill them up there. Too much open space. I needed close-quarters carnage. Tight spaces and confusion.’
King gave a half-smile. ‘Great minds think alike.’
‘You need a hospital,’ Slater said. He scooped an arm around King and helped him tentatively to his feet. ‘Where’s Isla?’
No response.
‘King,’ Slater said. ‘Where’s the pick-up point?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What?’
‘I’m kind of winging it here.’
Slater hesitated. ‘That’s right. This is your personal thing, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ King said. ‘It’s Isla’s.’
Silence.
After a long beat, Slater said, ‘She sent you in here?’
King nodded.
‘You didn’t know it was unofficial, did you?’
King shook his head.
‘That fucking bitch.’
‘Tell me about it,’ King muttered. ‘Let’s focus on getting back on home soil first. Then we can deal with all that.’
‘You can.’
King turned his head to look at Slater. ‘Will…’
‘I’m not going back,’ Slater said. ‘They’ll kill me. Or lock me away in a military prison for the rest of my life.’
‘They didn’t kill me,’ King said. ‘And I did the same as you. They welcomed me with open arms.’
‘You didn’t just disappear. I went AWOL. They won’t forgive that. You know it as well as I do.’
‘I don’t think I can get back on my own,’ King admitted, wincing as more agony coursed through him.
‘I’ll help you back,’ Slater said. ‘Then I’m gone.’
‘They’ll arrest you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
King cast his eyes over the production room floor, littered with the dead bodies of Slater’s enemies. He shrugged. ‘Point taken.’
Slater leant over the desk and snatched up the phone. He handed it to King. ‘Make the call.’
King’s vision wavered. He reached for the number pad with trembling fingers, then stopped. ‘Dial for me. You know her private line.’
Slater hesitated. Then he punched in a long string of numbers and handed the phone to King.
The call connected immediately, and was answered with reserved silence. King paused, unnerved by her unresponsiveness. Then he realised the number was unknown to her.
‘Isla,’ he said. ‘It’s King.’
‘Oh my god!’ Isla yelled. ‘I’ve been doing everything to get in touch. What the fuck have you done?!’
He paused, shocked by the outburst. ‘What…?’
‘What did you do? Who did you piss off?’
‘What are you talking about, Isla?’ he said.
‘Please don’t tell me you’re anywhere near Shiveluch Volcano.’
He paused. ‘I am.’
‘Get out,’ she demanded, her voice more panicked than he had ever heard it. ‘Get the fuck out, right now.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know who you infuriated, but the Russians are trying to wipe you out. They just launched an ICBM. It’s directed at the Kamchatka Peninsula. They’re bombing themselves with the most powerful non-nuclear ballistic missile in their arsenal.’
49
Terror seized King in its icy grasp. He felt it flood through his limbs, lending him a sudden spike in his heart rate. He sat up straight in the chair.
‘Isla,’ he hissed. ‘Get in touch with your superiors. Shoot it down. We’ll all die if you can’t.’
‘I’m not hiding this from my superiors,’ she said. ‘As soon as I lost contact with you, I turned myself in.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Don’t worry about me. It’s too late for me. I’m responsible for my own mistakes. Get yourself out of there.’
‘Shoot it down,’ he repeated.
‘We can’t. There’s nothing we can do to stop them bombing their own territory. Do you want the exact co-ordinates of the suspected impact zone?’
‘Yes.’
She relayed them to him. He checked them against the latitude and longitude still displayed on the computer monitor and swore viciously.
‘That’s us,’ he said. ‘They’re destroying the mine and all the land around it. Eliminating all evidence.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry. You’re sure it’s not a nuke?’
‘We don’t think so. Get yourself as many miles away as you can. If you avoid the blast radius you should be okay.’
&nbs
p; How long?’
‘Six minutes, by our calculations.’
King tossed the phone away.
Slater stood poised in the centre of the room, charged with nervous energy. ‘What the hell was that about?’
‘We need to be miles away from here in six minutes,’ King said. ‘The Russians just launched a missile at us.’
Slater froze. He gestured to the dead men around him. ‘Why would they do that? They still think their men are in here.’
‘Collateral,’ King said, rising off the chair. ‘They don’t care. They’re turning all record of this operation into a scorching crater.’
‘Why?’
‘Protecting their identities.’
King saw it dawn on Slater’s face that the situation wasn’t infeasible. He watched the man suppress panic and spur the five terrified health workers into action.
‘The elevator!’ he commanded. ‘Go. Right now.’
They took off in a cloud of fear, limbs scrambling against the rock. One by one they tore around the open doorway and sprinted into the darkness of the tunnels.
King lurched forward and stumbled off-balance. He screamed silently at his legs to work, but his body wasn’t listening to his mind. He thought he might pass out from the exertion.
Slater seized him under the arms and hauled him towards the door, carrying most of King’s weight across his straining muscles. King staggered as best he could. They rounded the corner and plunged into the depths of the mine.
‘Leave me,’ King muttered.
‘Shut up.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked you to come.’
‘We can make it.’
King heard Slater bare his teeth and pick up the pace, desperation charging his system. He willed himself forward with everything he had left, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
‘Five minutes,’ he whispered, terrified.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Slater said.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’
‘Not a clue.’
King grunted in frustration and slapped the side of his head with his good hand, trying to shock his system into focusing. Barely able to keep conscious, he brought up the makeshift map of the tunnel system in his head. It was up to him to guide them out of the maze. Otherwise they would get lost in the shadows, and a ballistic missile would detonate above their heads.