by Matt Rogers
In that moment, King knew he was bat-shit crazy, and that he would never be let out of El Infierno voluntarily. Unless he left via a body bag. He had angered Rico, a man used to getting whatever he pleased. Infuriated him, even.
‘You think that changes things?’ Rico said. ‘Just because you didn’t have a motive? You put your hands on my men. That’s a death sentence.’
‘I’m trying to be reasonable,’ King said.
‘Fuck you. I should kill you myself. But that’d be too quick. I’ll just throw you back in there. You won’t last long.’
‘You’re an amateur,’ King said.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. This entire thing is nothing but a temper tantrum. You should let me go, and forget I ever existed. I made you look like a fool. Accept that. Learn from it. Move on.’
Rage flickered behind Rico’s brown eyes. He surged forward and grabbed Percy by the shirt. Dragged him over.
‘You want to insult me?!’ he roared, loud enough for most of the pavilion’s occupants to hear. ‘Are you forgetting where we are? I run this whole state!’
‘Don’t,’ King said, in a voice barely above a whisper. His veins were ice-cold.
‘Who’s going to fucking stop me?’ Rico snarled.
For a single fleeting moment King met Percy’s gaze. He saw the unbridled terror in the man’s eyes. Even worse, he could do nothing to stop what came next.
Rico pulled the trigger.
A barrage of rounds exploded from the Kalashnikov’s barrel at close range, all tearing into Percy’s chest. The man let out a weak cry as bullets shredded his shirt, pulping his torso with lead. Blood sprayed from the wounds. Rico let him go and he collapsed to the pavement.
King saw his eyes. They had already glazed over. The first two or three rounds had most likely done the job. But Rico made sure to put more than ten into him.
Just to send a message.
Something deep inside King snapped. He felt it give, just like that. One second he had his emotions under control. Perfectly subdued, like a lion on a leash.
Then, as he watched the life fade out of a man who had done absolutely nothing wrong, the leash vanished. He couldn’t control what came next. Professionalism and discipline had taught him to battle the primal urges that came with anger. Many times he had successfully done so.
This time, he found it physically impossible to show restraint.
He charged at Rico before the man even had time to stop firing, or swing his aim around, or prepare himself in any way. He seized the gun and wrenched it free. Even in such a state of heightened anger, he felt the strength that fury lent him.
It was a completely different level of efficiency.
He broke Rico’s finger as he tugged the Kalashnikov away. The man couldn’t get it out of the trigger guard in time, and King pulled with a force that shattered the bone into pieces. He howled and recoiled back, surprised by the sudden pain.
King spun the assault rifle in his hands, feeling its familiar weight. He righted his aim and fired, a short tap-tap-tap, three rounds that tore open Rico’s leg, plunging deep into the kneecap. He dropped where he stood. Legs buckling. Mouth opening in surprise. King reversed his grip on the gun again and swung with the speed of a Major League batter. The butt caught Rico on his open jaw. The crack that accompanied the impact sounded gruesome enough. A couple of teeth flew loose, surrounded by droplets of crimson.
Fixated on causing as much pain as humanly possible, King dropped the Kalashnikov and surged on Rico’s battered form. He grabbed one arm and twisted wildly, breaking it at the elbow joint with a juicy pop. Then he wrenched it back the other way. Breaking more bones. Causing more agony. He moved with a savage ferocity that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
In the space of five or six seconds, he’d brought a world of pain on the supposedly mighty drug lord. Rico lay in the dirt, curled into a pathetic ball. Still conscious. Nothing had come close to knocking him out. King had made sure of that. But he would be feeling every inch of the trauma inflicted on his feeble frame.
‘Been waiting to do that for a while,’ King said.
Rico let out a guttural noise somewhere between a sob and a dry heave. He lay on his back next to Percy’s corpse, staring at his useless left arm and his right leg now pouring blood into the dirt, creating a grimy viscous putty as the two combined. More crimson ran from his mouth.
Somehow, he managed a sentence. ‘They’ll kill you.’
‘They’ll try. But things have changed. Now I need to try and escape.’
‘Y-you won’t get out of here.’
‘I might. And if I do, I won’t rest until your entire operation is demolished.’
Rico laughed pathetically and spat blood into the dirt next to his head. ‘Good luck. What makes you think you have a chance?’
King leant down. ‘Because you don’t know who I am. You don’t know what I can do.’
He raised the Kalashnikov, aiming the barrel between Rico’s eyes. Ready to fire the kill shot.
Wild shouting sounded from somewhere above. King looked up and saw a cluster of guards standing on the balcony of the closest watchtower, peering down at them from the vantage point.
They saw the blood pooling into the dirt.
They saw one of the wounded men was a prison official.
They saw an armed prisoner standing on open ground, unguarded.
They raised their weapons.
King abandoned his position and scrambled across the narrow path, sprinting wildly, searching for cover. The dirt kicked up near his feet, accompanied by the distant din of rifle fire. He ducked behind an indiscriminate concrete building opposite the pavilion. Across the path, inmates peered out through the steel mesh, fascinated by the scene unfolding.
The klaxons around the compound roared into life, shrieking and hollering. They signalled an approaching raqueta.
Guardia Nacional would storm the prison at any moment.
Here we go, King thought.
He clenched his fists, hands now shaking from adrenalin. From his position, there was all likelihood that the Guardia Nacional would tear past him, heading straight into the pavilion. In their haste they might not see his crouching form in the lee of a neighbouring building.
Sure enough, ten seconds later a dozen men rounded the corner, coming into view, all dressed in military uniform, all armed with batons and shotguns.
They didn’t notice him. The few that reached the pavilion first spread out across the various gates, punching in key codes, getting ready to swarm the prisoners.
King took a deep breath. He had two options. He could slip past the Guardia Nacional and head back the way they had come. Attempt to find a way out through there. But it unnerved him. The likelihood of stumbling into a dead end was too high. Getting caught was no longer an option. After butchering Rico, he didn’t imagine they would be lenient on him.
The second option was tantalising.
He could instigate a war in the middle of a raqueta.
It would cause complete anarchy. At least, for a while. But he had to draw the prison guards away from the wall. He had to create a situation so insane that all prior systems of controlling El Infierno would become shaky.
So he broke free from his cover and quietly followed the Guardia Nacional into the pavilion, with a single word on his mind.
Chaos.
CHAPTER 22
Already, tensions were heightened.
The military guard storming into the compound were entering a different world. The first raqueta had been frenetic, yet largely uneventful. The beatings dished out by the Guardia Nacional that time were savage, but were not retaliated against. They seemed to be the norm. This time, the atmosphere amongst the general prison population was tenfold more hostile. Many had been preparing for a confrontation with King and his men. Testosterone was high. Violent reactions would be easier to provoke.
King knew he could capitalise on this.
Amidst t
he screaming and grunting of bodies clashing together, he slipped into the fray and waited for an opportunity to kick things off. It came when a soldier wielding a shotgun turned his back, heading for a group of thugs in the corner. King came up behind him and slammed a boot into the back of the guy’s knee. His leg buckled and he loosened his grip on the shotgun, clearly surprised by the well-placed blow. King seized the shotgun and jerked backwards, slamming the butt into the guy’s helmet with enough force to knock him off his feet.
Then King used the momentum generated by the blow to line up his aim and fire a cluster of riot pellets into two Guardia Nacional soldiers nearby.
It was the first discharge of a weapon inside the pavilion.
The guards grimaced and doubled over, taking most of the pellets to their torsos, winding them, stinging them, surprising them. Soldiers who witnessed the attack cried out in rage and surged towards King. He dropped the shotgun and ducked into the pack of prisoners in the centre of the pavilion, becoming just another body in a sea of brutish men.
He headed straight for the hallway on the far side. On the way through, he made sure to cause as much trouble as humanly possible. He bumped into a tough-looking Spanish thug. He seized two handfuls of the guy’s shirt, spun him round and heaved him into a pack of men nearby, knocking several of them off-balance. Then he spun on his heel and slammed a fist into the gut of another random prisoner. The guy doubled over, moaning. King pushed him off his feet and he careered into a second cluster of men, all taken by surprise by the violent action.
That was all it took.
Wild brawls broke out all around him, spurred on by the confusion of the raqueta and the overabundance of testosterone rippling through the air. King knew he’d just created a shit-storm. He ducked low and powered through the chaos, using his size and strength to his advantage, bundling everyone in his way aside like rag dolls. This only seemed to further provoke the inmates. In the sea of men vying for physical dominance, getting pushed over like a feather enraged almost everyone he encountered.
King slipped into the hallway just as the fighting reached its peak.
He noted several things at once. First, the grimy corridor was sparsely populated. The majority of conflict had broken out in the main area of the pavilion, leaving only a few drug-crazed stragglers crawling across the muddy floor, too high to even think about fighting. He glanced down the length of the hallway and saw Tevin’s door still firmly shut. The man was hiding in there, avoiding the chaos of the raqueta.
Very likely up to something.
The door to his own room lay ajar. One of the Guardia Nacional had stuck his head out, peering into the pavilion, surprised by the sudden outbreak of hysteria and madness. King knew he had an opportunity to capitalise on the confusion once again.
‘Rico!’ he yelled to the guard, feigning fear. ‘He is crazy! He killed my friend! He’s shooting at the pavilion!’
Unable to understand English, the guard cocked his head, attempting to make sense of King’s panicked sentences. By the time he began to retort, probably telling King to stay back, he had already come too close. He slammed the door back into the guy, buckling him, then charged into the room.
‘Fight!’ he roared as he slammed into a cluster of bodies.
He wasn’t able to deduce the twins’ exact location, but he was sure they would get the message.
He locked a powerful forearm around the throat of the guard he’d disoriented and squeezed. The guy bucked and writhed like a mad man, but it had little effect on King’s hold. He felt the man slipping into unconsciousness as the four men on his side lashed out in frenzied bursts of anger.
By the time King put the Guardia Nacional soldier out and released him to the floor, the other two men had been dealt with sufficiently. The twins had beat down one guard using his own Kalashnikov as a dull object, and Daniel and Mateo were in the process of raining down savage blows on the third.
‘Stop,’ King said, and they instantly ceased.
The third guard, still conscious, stared up at them. King held out a hand and nodded a truce, gesturing for him to stay put at risk of another beating. The guy nodded, wiped blood from his nostrils and scooted to the far wall. He sat still and simply watched.
‘Where’s your friend?’ Raul said, looking around.
‘Dead,’ King said, bowing his head for a moment. He let the image of Percy’s bloodied corpse lend him energy. ‘I just caused a raqueta. A very violent one. I’m going to attempt to get out of here now. It might mean I end up on the wrong end of a bullet. You four can either come with me, or stay put. Completely up to you. Tell them.’
Raul muttered to the other three in Spanish, translating the message. Daniel and Mateo listened silently, their faces contorted into skeptical grimaces. King already knew they would refuse. Their opinion on him had quickly changed. They thought he was some kind of wild madman.
Perhaps I am.
Luis seemed eager. His eyes widened and the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. Fascinated by the opportunity to escape.
‘I think we’ve made our decision,’ Raul said after the four had finished going back and forth.
‘You two are coming?’ King said, pointing to the twins. ‘And the other two are staying?’
‘Yes … how’d you—?’
‘Pretty obvious. Let’s go.’
He hadn’t grown close to either Daniel or Mateo. He had known both of them for less than a day. He couldn’t communicate with them due to the language barrier. It was their choice to stay, and he had no qualms with their decision either way. They would probably look back on their choices and smile if he and the twins ended up getting caught and executed.
Either way, he wasn’t bothered at all. He nodded goodbyes to both of them and then turned to Raul and Luis.
‘This could get messy,’ he said.
‘We know,’ Raul said.
‘Any reason you two want to take that risk?’
‘Our sister, and our mother. They were dependent on us when we worked for the Movers. That’s why we started in the first place. We haven’t been able to contact them since we got in.’
‘You’d risk your life for them?’
‘Of course. It’s family. I thought escape was impossible before, but if you’re saying there’s a chance then we’ll take it. Wouldn’t you do the same for yours?’
‘I don’t have any family.’
Raul nodded. ‘I guess you can’t relate then.’
‘I can’t relate. But I can understand. Let’s go.’
They gathered up the Kalashnikovs dropped by the three guards, so that each man brandished an assault rifle. King checked the safety of his weapon. It had been flicked off before the soldiers had entered. They’d been ready to kill.
Now he was ready to kill.
The old Jason King had resurfaced.
The din of the raqueta had been muffled by the concrete walls, but as they exited into the hallway its volume reached a crescendo. King took in the scene, slightly surprised by how quickly the conflict had escalated.
The pavilion had turned to bedlam.
Guardia Nacional were involved in many of the brawls. Batons swung and the constant crack of shotgun discharges ripped through the heavy air. In their primal states, the prisoners had switched from fighting amongst themselves to lashing out at the guards. It had quickly become a skirmish.
King couldn’t help but hesitate. He’d planned to charge headlong through the chaos — cutting a path to the nearest open gate — but the sheer intensity of the conflict made him stop to reconsider. Maybe there was another way…
Then he heard screaming behind him.
Coming from the end of the hallway.
He turned and saw Tevin’s door flying open. Armed men spilled into the corridor, searching for targets. All their eyes were wide and rabid. He guessed most were hopped up on some kind of drug that Tevin had access to. Maybe speed.
Tevin’s hired thugs. They numbered at least seven, and cam
e tearing down the corridor like berserkers. Heading straight for them.
The pavilion to King’s rear. Crazed killers to his front.
He raised his Kalashnikov and started firing, and then all hell truly broke loose.
CHAPTER 23
The element of surprise saved his life.
The thugs hadn’t been anticipating King and the twins lying in wait in the corridor. They must have planned to seize the confusion and charge to his room, bursting the door open and unloading their weapons into the cramped space. It would have worked, had King not been ready for violence at a moment’s notice.
He flipped a neurological switch and was transported back to a time where all he did was kill. When his career had revolved around the deaths of mercenaries and gangsters and terrorists. He swung the barrel from man-to-man, squeezing off just enough shots to put them down. He moved with cold, calculated efficiency. Blocking out all emotions.
It only hindered his aim if he thought of his targets as people.
For a brief millisecond, he considered the dangers of returning to this state. He’d worked so hard to break free from it. He’d retired from Black Force. He’d travelled through desolate countries and kept his head low to try and recover from a career of madness. And here he was, right back in the mayhem.
But it was the only choice he had if he wanted to stay alive.
He killed every thug who was in the process of raising a gun. Two at the front. One off to the side. They sprawled into the mud, bleeding heavily. Firearms clattered from their limp hands. The rest seemed to wield only handheld weapons. Bats, crowbars, machetes. King picked the guy with the machete off. His head jerked back as he took two rounds to the temple in a spray of brain matter.
And then they clashed.
The hallway was too narrow, too small. He couldn’t hope to put them all down before it turned to a close-quarters brawl. The commotion had played out so fast that Raul and Luis had yet to get a shot off. Their reflexes were slower. Less honed.
They still had their barrels pointed at the ground when the group of Tevin’s goons slammed into them.