by Matt Rogers
A filthy cramped corridor was the worst place for a strategic fight. But that didn’t matter, because King thrived in these scenarios — when technique and efficiency went out the window and the upper hand was given to the man with the most sheer power.
He knew that was him.
As soon as two thugs crashed into his chest — knocking the gun out of his hands — he exploded. He threw a vicious slicing elbow to his left. A sharp knee to the right. The men fell away. He seized the man in front of him — a tall, bald Spanish guy baring his teeth — and delivered a colossal headbutt into his nose.
It was the third septum his forehead had destroyed since arriving at El Infierno.
Raul and Luis did their best. Both men were well-built. Tall and solid. They could scrap. More importantly, King knew his own actions would encourage them, spurring them to fight. He hadn’t hesitated in the slightest before fighting back against Tevin’s assault. He knew from experience that the display of bravery would lend a motivational boost to everyone on his side.
So the twins lashed out at anyone nearby, giving it their all. King tried to ascertain if they had the upper hand, but the brawl was too feverish to get a decent look. He could only worry about himself.
As he lashed out with a two-punch combination that smacked a thug’s chin in one direction just so he could wind up for a haymaker on the other side, he took a quick glance to see if Tevin had appeared. So far, still no sign of him.
The guy in front of him dropped, his limbs loose. He’d been knocked senseless by the combination. King sensed Tevin’s thugs crumbling all around him and realised that he and the twins had more than likely gained the upper hand in the conflict. He hadn’t taken any kind of considerable blow yet. Sure, he was injured from the beatdown he’d suffered during the first raqueta, but adrenalin did its best to mask the effects of all the bruises and cuts.
Then a wave of bodies slammed into him from behind, pressing him forward, knocking him off his heels.
Claustrophobia kicked in. The corridor had become so densely populated by the fresh swarm of men that he had trouble breathing. He wheeled around and saw inmates surging into the hallway, fleeing from the Guardia Nacional.
They must have turned lethal, King thought.
It was the only thing that could explain such a mad rush.
Punches and baton swings whistled through the air around his head. He weaved left and right, ducking and bobbing. He dodged the tip of a baton that came at him so fast it would have broken his jaw had it connected. The displaced air washed over him, chilling him.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He didn’t even see where it came from. Just that it almost knocked him into a coma. He slammed a trio of inmates aside and spotted Raul and Luis in the crowd.
‘To the gate!’ he roared above the din.
Raul nodded and battered a man in his way aside. The guy’s slight frame didn’t stand a chance in the carnage. He crashed into the far wall and dropped underneath the rampaging horde.
The three of them powered through. King got in front of the twins and used his weight advantage to smash aside anyone in his path. He didn’t care who they were. Inmates, Guardia Nacional … they all stood between him and the other side of El Infierno’s walls.
A soldier saw the three of them fleeing in the opposite direction to the crowd. He raised a shotgun and aimed it directly at King’s face. King looked down the barrel and baulked. Riot pellets or not, they would still shred his skin to pieces. Probably kill him at such a close range.
He ducked and leapt simultaneously. The guy had the extra weight of the shotgun in both hands and couldn’t bring his arms down in time to protect his mid-section. King rammed a shoulder into his stomach and took him off his feet. The two sprawled into the mud.
King was momentarily blinded by the mud that geysered away from the impact zone. He wiped it frantically off his eyelids and assessed the location of the guard. The man had landed hard, smashing all the breath out of his lungs, sending the shotgun flying away into the crowd. As bodies moved all around them King drove a fist into his solar plexus, taking out every last ounce of breath. The guy coughed and spat and doubled over. It would take him a few minutes to recover from that.
All King needed.
He saw the tiniest sliver of a gap between two separate brawls, both involving a mixture of inmates and guards. A narrow line leading directly towards one of the gates. He scrambled to his feet and turned to find the twins.
He stared straight into the barrel of an automatic pistol.
Tevin leered from the other end.
Somehow, someway, the old man had made his way through the pavilion in the heat of the widespread melee. Inmates had probably let him pass. Even in such rabid states they still more than likely respected his rank within the pavilion.
He’d made a beeline for King.
King didn’t move. Any sudden action would cause Tevin to pull the trigger even quicker than he already intended to. He’d only been staring at the weapon for half a second, but in his mind it felt like an eternity. What could he do?
Nothing.
Except feel a crushing blow in his ribs as a Guardia Nacional soldier crash-tackled him, sprinting in from the right-hand-side, using a running start to drive momentum into the attack. The man must have seen King attack his comrade and decide to return the favour.
King’s neck whipped to the side, jarring several muscles at once. He felt a ringing pain in his ears. Either from Tevin’s gun discharging at such close proximity, or his brain scrambling from the tackle. Whatever the case, he splayed across the dirt with enough force to slam him into a semi-conscious state. He felt a brutal thump as his head bounced off the hard ground. He groaned and rolled over.
Incapacitated.
But alive.
He looked up at Tevin, who had fired at where King had stood not a second earlier. The old man struggled to correct his aim. Battle raged around him. It threw his senses off just enough. Added a tiny delay to his actions.
All King needed.
He leapt forward, head pounding, arms outstretched. One hand wrapped around Tevin’s lower leg and he wrenched with everything he had, completing what was known as an ankle pick takedown. Usually — if implemented perfectly — the opponent ended up on their back.
But this was not a trained martial artist. Tevin was a frail old man. And King was a powerhouse.
Tevin left the ground and rotated almost an entire revolution, his frail bones doing nothing to resist King’s ferocity. He landed on his neck, hard enough to cause major neurological damage, not hard enough to kill him.
King was more than happy to complete the equation.
He scooped up the gun the man had dropped — a Taurus 24/7 — and brought his aim around. He destroyed Tevin’s head with a trio of Parabellum rounds. Pulped the guy’s temple into a bloody pulp.
Good riddance, King thought.
He’d given Tevin more than enough chances to leave him alone. He’d put up with attempts on his life more than once. Enough was enough. A man only had so much patience.
Raul stumbled over to King, bleeding heavily from the mouth. It was clear that he’d taken a few good punches. Luis emerged from the crowd, shoving aside two Spanish inmates. Blood covered his bare arms.
It wasn’t his.
His face didn’t bear a single scratch.
‘Your brother’s deadly,’ King said as Raul helped him to his feet.
‘He can hold his own, that’s for sure.’
King led the trio out the open pavilion gate. He guessed it was the first time the twins had left the enclosure in a very long time. Their feet crunched slowly over the gravel, and they gazed around in awe at the surrounding buildings, all tinged orange under the warm glow of the rising sun.
Dawn had broken.
A volley of gunfire from a distant watchtower sent a spray of rounds across the path in front of them. King ducked low and wrapped an arm around each of the twins’ midsecti
ons. He spurred them forward. They dove in unison across the path and under the shelter of the same building he’d crouched behind a few minutes earlier.
‘We’re pinned down,’ King said, grunting in frustration as another magazine was emptied in their direction.
Then something happened which he didn’t anticipate.
A cluster of inmates had noticed them slipping out of the pavilion. For some reason unbeknownst to King, they decided to follow. Four men spilled out onto the pavement, fleeing the enclosure. Shots rattled around them and they all bolted in different directions.
It set off a chain reaction.
Before King knew it, half the pavilion’s population had surged out the open gates, directly defying the Guardia Nacional. Soldiers came sprinting out after them, tackling inmates at random, throwing wild shots. A multitude of fights broke out across the pavement.
King sensed rebellion in the air. It appeared his provocation at the start of the raqueta had created a snowball effect. Years upon years of abuse had turned the prisoners into caged animals. They were unleashing all the pent-up fury. King watched it unfold in awe.
‘This is getting out of hand,’ Raul said.
‘It’s exactly what we needed,’ King said. ‘I didn’t expect it to pay off so well.’
‘Do you know where we need to go?’
‘I know which way I was brought in. That’s about all I have.’
‘We don’t have any other choice, do we?’
‘I don’t. You two can go back to the pavilion whenever you please.’
‘I don’t want to be around to experience the aftermath of this,’ Raul said. He stared in shock at the carnage raging all around them. ‘Neither does Luis. And we have a family that needs us.’
King nodded and waited for an opportune moment to make a break for it. On a whim, he glanced down the track. Percy’s feeble corpse lay in the same place. His glasses were shattered. A peaceful calamity had crept over his face. The relief of death.
But he couldn’t concentrate on Percy for long at all.
Because the space where Rico had previously lay — cowering from his injuries — was bare. The man had disappeared.
‘Fuck,’ King whispered. ‘Let’s go, right now.’
‘Why right now?’ Raul said.
‘Because there’s someone around here who will do anything to kill me.’
They broke free from the narrow alley and took off down the pavement, heading for the far wall of El Infierno.
CHAPTER 24
King felt his chest heaving as he ran down indiscriminate paths, blood pumping, hands shaking. The twins followed close behind. The centre of El Infierno had been haphazardly thrown together in its construction. There wasn’t a shred of symmetry to its geographical layout. The rest of the prison had become a ghost town. Offices previously manned by guards and prison officials lay bare, paperwork strewn across the floor, swept off the desk as they dashed either toward or away from the source of commotion.
He could hear the violence from here, a soft echo of mad screaming that drifted over the buildings and permeated the prison grounds. Every guard in the complex would be drawn to the chaos. They remained at their stations when order was kept and procedures were set in stone. But King knew exactly how people in positions of power reacted when insanity broke out.
Not well.
He’d succeeded for most of his career by capitalising on the reactionary nature of his enemies. Now he would do so again.
He stopped running as they approached a sharp turn in between two enormous concrete structures. He raised a hand, halting Raul and Luis in their tracks. Ahead, the multi-storey outer wall loomed over everything else. A twisting path would take them right up to its door.
‘Wait,’ he whispered.
Gunshots sounded from the same direction they’d come. Either inmates had got their hands on weapons, or the Guardia Nacional had reached the end of their patience and turned to more dangerous means of subduing the riot. Probably both. It came with a shift in atmosphere. The situation had turned from barely under control to completely irrepressible.
Now people were dying.
King continued to wait. He predicted what would come next.
He was right.
A pair of prison guards stationed on this side of El Infierno came careering around the corner. They saw King standing in their path and baulked, but their momentum carried them a few more steps, unable to slow themselves in time.
The shiny assault rifles in their hands were useless at such close range. King bundled one up against the wall and kneed him in the gut, hard enough to do significant internal damage. The guy crumpled, letting go of the rifle.
An AK-74, King noted as he caught the gun in mid-air, spun and swung it into the neck of the second guard.
One of my favourites.
The butt of the Kalashnikov slammed home into the soft tissue of the guy’s throat. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to cause serious problems. He shot off his feet. As he went down, Raul kicked him hard in the ribs, incapacitating him for the foreseeable future.
They hadn’t done anything to provoke King. But sometimes certain situations called for injuries to innocents. Sure, it was unfortunate. But these men would heal up. He would die gruesomely if he stayed within these walls.
He turned to see both twins slack-jawed, astonished at the ease with which he’d dispatched the guards.
‘Come on,’ he said, hurrying them along.
The twins hustled past the two incapacitated guards. Before he followed, King bent down and patted his hands along the first man’s olive-coloured vest. He was met with no resistance. The blow to the gut had put the guy out of action for at least the next few minutes as he recovered his breath. King found what he was searching for — the jangle of a set of keys — and ripped the bunch from the guy’s pocket. Sure enough, a keycard had been slotted into the keychain, its plastic knocking between two keys. He gripped the bundle in one hand, keeping the other wrapped firmly around the AK-74.
‘You think that will get us through?’ Raul said.
‘Let’s hope so,’ King said. ‘Otherwise I’m going to have to turn to more desperate measures.’
‘These aren’t desperate measures?’
King looked up. ‘Not even close.’
‘You used to be a bad man, didn’t you?’
King glanced down at the prison guards writhing on the ground, fighting through the considerable pain he’d brought upon them. ‘Hard to say. There’s too many grey areas.’
‘Use those grey areas to get us out of here. Please.’
‘I’m trying my hardest not to.’
They continued towards the compound’s perimeter, passing under the line of sight of a rusting watchtower. If occupied, it would take little effort to unload automatic weapons in their direction, picking them off from a clear vantage point. But there wasn’t a guard in sight. King heard the conflict on the other side of El Infierno escalate in volume, and grimaced.
‘Raul,’ he said. The man stopped and turned. ‘You think they’ll get the riot under control?’
Raul shrugged. ‘No idea. But don’t feel bad. Something like that had been brewing for months. It would have broken out with or without you. I was waiting for the day it all kicked off.’
‘To escape?’
He shook his head. ‘To fight back.’
Up ahead, Luis called out. They saw him tugging at the handle of a thick metal door built into the side of the multi-storey perimeter. It led inside. Probably into a maze of dilapidated corridors. As King jogged to catch up, he found himself questioning whether he’d instigated all this anarchy for nothing. If they were cornered inside the building, he didn’t fancy his chances of being alive by sundown.
He approached the panel next to the steel door and tapped the keycard against a small electronic pad. A beep of confirmation — and a small green light kicking into life above the panel — indicated that the card was compatible.
Lui
s pulled the handle again.
It didn’t budge.
King eyed a grid of numbers under the pad, hovering just above a thin LED screen.
‘There’s a key-code on every door,’ he said. ‘Thought that might happen.’
His gut constricted as the situation became clear. A beat of fear arced its way down his spine. His hands grew clammy. Sweat dripped off his brow.
Death would not come quickly if they caught him alive.
‘I’m going back to those two guards,’ he said quietly.
Raul noted the steely determination in his tone and raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Get the code out of them.’
‘What if more of them catch up? What if we’re overwhelmed?’
‘We don’t have many other choices, Raul.’
Then the door burst open in their face.
CHAPTER 25
A frantic shuffle of bodies. Official-looking military uniforms. Tight lines of tension on foreheads. Furrowed brows. Determined expressions. Bulky assault rifles.
Four Guardia Nacional soldiers stormed out of the building.
King saw them power their way through, carried by the energy injected from approaching combat. At the same time, he heard the whining of an alarm behind them, emanating from within the building.
Reinforcements.
Heading for the pavilion.
He met their eyes, and knew both he and the twins would be torn to shreds in seconds if he didn’t act. Almost in slow-motion, he saw their pupils widening in shock, their hands beginning to react, their barrels swinging in his direction. They were very clearly three prisoners far away from where they were supposed to be. They were close to the wall. They were armed. They would not be shown mercy.
So King would not show them mercy either.
He dropped, his feet scraping away from the ground. He fell a foot and then his knees slammed into the earth. His jaw rattled. His senses faltered for a moment, stunned by the impact. But he’d driven his centre mass out of the guards’ line of sight, meaning it took them that extra second to react to his actions and re-focus their aim.