by Matt Rogers
With the speedometer rising fast towards the ninety-mile-an-hour mark, he took his foot off the accelerator and moved it across to the brake. Before he pressed down, he tore his gaze away from the road ahead for a split second and checked the speed at which he was travelling.
That was enough.
When he looked up, his headlights illuminated three figures crouched by the side of the road a couple of hundred feet ahead. He couldn’t make out a single thing about them, but their hunched outlines were enough to spike his heart rate. There shouldn’t be a soul in these parts. He was travelling through the middle of nowhere. A cluster of individuals could only be there for a single reason.
He slammed the brakes with sudden urgency and fish-tailed the Mercedes to the right.
It wouldn’t help.
The windscreen exploded in a deafening hurricane of glass. At the speed the coupe had reached, the shards came flying inside the vehicle, whipping around the interior as King swerved violently off the road in the opposite direction to the three men.
He didn’t hear the gunshots above the racket, but he’d been through enough to know bullets were tearing the chassis to shreds. With a pounding heart he ducked under the line of sight and kept all his weight pressed firmly on the brake pedal.
Too little, too late.
The coupe slowed as it left the asphalt and bounced viciously off the gravel surface. King felt the wheels shuddering under the uneven ground and quickly realised that would be the least of his problems. In the sudden explosion of noise and confusion he hadn’t managed to work out exactly where he was on the mountain trail, but in all likelihood there were ravines and valleys on either side of the road.
He closed his eyes, kept his foot on the brake, and hoped for the best.
Hoping achieved nothing.
The whining of tyres on gravel disappeared all at once and a terrifying moment of silence descended over the Mercedes’ interior. King knew he was in serious shit.
Next came the stomach drop as the coupe lurched over the edge of something. He wasn’t sure what. Blind to how bad the situation was, he sat up to get his bearings.
He swallowed hard and braced for impact.
He knew the drop could easily be fatal, depending on which way the chips rolled. The front end careered off the edge of a steep descent packed with boulders and scrub jutting out at all angles. Enough forward momentum and the car would enter a barrel roll for well over a hundred feet.
But if luck fell on his side…
With a roar that sounded from everywhere all at once, the Mercedes smashed into a boulder, crumpling one side of the hood. The airbag exploded out of the wheel, impairing King’s vision. He jerked against his seatbelt. It tore the air from his lungs and punched a thick invisible fist into his sternum, winding him. The car spun horizontally and its tail ploughed into a second rock, demolishing the chassis in a violent explosion of parts. His head flew back, carried by the momentum, and smashed against the headrest. He bit down hard on his tongue. He tasted blood and let out a grunt of pain.
In its final throes, the Mercedes rotated a full revolution, rolling onto its roof and then slamming back down on its wheels. It came to rest wedged in the middle of a cluster of rocks, all the windows shattered, all the tyres burst, most of the chassis nothing but a dented mess.
King let his heart rate settle and sucked in a full breath of air. Droplets of blood made their way down his throat. He coughed and forced himself to calm down. He was badly shaken by the sudden turn of events, but the hundred-thousand euros of German engineering had done their job, protecting him from any significant injuries. A cheap second-hand car might have been torn to pieces by the impact.
He looked out over the deflating airbag, into darkness. Both headlights had been destroyed by the crash. He couldn’t make out much more than faint outlines, but they revealed enough.
The car had come to rest at a fourty-five degree angle roughly a quarter of the way down a steep and uneven slope. Surrounded by boulders and dead undergrowth and the occasional laricio pine tree, King found that the coupe had fallen far enough to block the line of sight from the road. He made out several decent areas to take cover from his position in the driver’s seat. As the loose parts that had come off the Mercedes during its descent skittered away, the final noises of the crash faded into obscurity.
Silence settled over the hillside.
King heard faint voices from the road above, speaking in Arabic. He had spent enough time in that part of the world to form a rudimentary grasp of the language. He translated as best he could.
‘Did you see that?!’ one man cried.
Another responded, ‘You think we hit him?’
A voice that King recognised as Afshar spoke, a little softer. ‘If we didn’t, the fool killed himself. Did you hear the sound of that wreck?’
King undid his seatbelt and gently slipped a hand into the door handle. He swung the battered thing out and shimmied out of the demolished car, a little bloodied and bruised, but overall no worse for wear. Making no noise whatsoever, he crouch-walked around to the rear of the car, taking care to stay in the lee of a nearby boulder despite the night enveloping his massive frame.
‘You’re going to be fucking sorry you didn’t hit me,’ he whispered as he noiselessly lifted the trunk and withdrew the fully-loaded Beretta-M9 he kept inside.
CHAPTER 9
Like a bad dream, ten years of experience came roaring back.
So much for paradise.
He thumbed the safety off and slipped a finger inside the trigger guard. A warm evening breeze blew gently down the hillside, ruffling his hair. There were no sounds of wildlife. The slope was barren enough as it was, and the noise of his car hurtling off the edge of the road above would have scared away the few animals that populated the region.
If Afshar had survived this long as a mercenary, then he was a skilled and ruthless bastard. King wouldn’t underestimate him. Most employees in his field got rich quick and disappeared, or died trying. Turning the life of a soldier of fortune into a long-term career was an incredibly rare trait to possess. King had done it. He knew a handful of others that had.
Therefore, he placed Afshar in that category of individuals. He knew that dispatching him would be no small task.
They would come down to verify his dead body, without a doubt.
He would intercept them when they did.
He pressed himself against the nearest rock, feeling its smooth texture against his bare shoulders. He became still and listened for the sound of Afshar and his thugs. Three men made noise descending a treacherous slope in the dark — no matter how adept they were at masking it.
Then he felt it. The same feeling he’d experienced a million times before. The feeling he’d worked so hard to avoid.
He felt true calm.
This was what he did. It was all he did. How could he deny that any longer?
Poised quietly in the dark, waiting for enemy forces to come searching for his head, King felt an unbridled thrill. It started at the base of his spine and worked its way up in an involuntary shiver.
He loved it.
And he couldn’t deny it.
A cluster of twigs snapped a few dozen feet up the hillside. King noted the position of the sound and crept around the perimeter of the boulder, taking care in each step, using the limited visibility to scour the ground for anything that might accidentally signal his own location.
He ducked out of sight just as the trio reached the wreckage.
Judging by the sounds they made, the three men approached from different angles, surrounding the car. Their guns would be raised. King kept his breathing low and steady. A soft glow emanated from the edges of the boulder, which meant one of them had lit up a flashlight. That meant…
One of the men cursed quietly in Arabic and shut the light off instantaneously. King smiled wryly. They were good. Most would panic when they found the car empty. These three didn’t. They quieted down, probably alrea
dy in the process of spreading out.
Putting distance between the potential targets.
But they’d made a fatal mistake by bringing the light out in the first place.
The boulder had protected King from direct exposure to the light, so his eyes were still adjusted to the dark. The beam’s close proximity to the trio meant that it would take them a moment to re-adjust.
King rounded the boulder fast, not caring how much noise he made. Any shot headed his way for the next few seconds would be entirely blind as their vision became accustomed to the night. He took his chances.
He raised the Beretta and fired three rounds as soon as he made out the shape of a bulky man near the wreckage.
A trio of blinding muzzle flashes tore across the slope, the light illuminating all the surroundings for a brief moment. The guy King aimed at grunted from the first bullet, but the other two shut him up for good. He jerked like a marionette on strings and slapped across the hood of the Mercedes. The sound was wet. Blood had already begun pouring from his fatal wounds.
Before the other two had time even had time to register what had happened, King was gone.
‘Ahhh, motherfu—’ Afshar cursed in English.
A couple of wild shots tore past the space King had occupied a second ago. But he wasn’t there to see it. He skirted round to the other side, hurdling a fallen log, and crashed down into a thick clump of undergrowth. Thorn brambles tore into his calf. He felt warm liquid run down his leg and swore under his breath. But the pain was secondary to what he needed to do.
With twelve rounds left in the box magazine he let off an eight-round volley over the space of two or three seconds. He was just as blind to his targets as they were to him, all disoriented by the muzzle flashes. Hopefully — sheer volume would lend a hand.
Afshar’s other friend let out a blood-curdling scream.
King noted his success and dropped into the scrub, pressing his face through a mass of branches and brambles, burrowing his bulky frame as deep as it could go into the undergrowth. He had to disappear to throw Afshar off.
After all, he had no idea what kind of firepower he was facing.
The answer came swiftly.
King recognised the familiar stutter of a HK sub-machine gun sounding from somewhere near the wreckage. Displaced air washed over him as bullets tore across the space above his head. He couldn’t work out whether it was an MP-5 or an MP-7, but it didn’t matter.
Afshar emptied the entire clip in his direction. King kept his head down and clenched his jaw tighter than he thought possible, riding out the wave of stress crashing through him. His chest constricted and he gasped for breath. Towards the end of the barrage, a single round ripped through the bush he’d burrowed into, coming dangerously close to ending his life.
Then the gunfire ceased.
King figured he could make it to the wreckage in four seconds at a full-pace sprint. He didn’t think Afshar could eject an old magazine and chamber a fresh one in that time. It was a complete guess, but he had to act instantly if he wanted a shot.
He burst out of his rudimentary cover and descended the short stretch of hillside with exaggerated, powerful strides. Halfway to the wreckage, he realised he’d gained far too much momentum than he originally anticipated. In fact, he was out of control. He didn’t think he could stop himself without collapsing in a heap.
Afshar heard his large frame bounding towards the Mercedes and poked his head out of the wreckage.
King fired the last few rounds in the Beretta before the gun clicked dry. All of them missed. He threw the useless weapon away and leapt with everything he had.
He skimmed across the roof of the wreckage, clearing it with barely an inch to spare. Wildly out of control, he thrust two hands out as he passed over the Mercedes, hoping to seize any kind of grip on Afshar’s clothing and drag him along for the ride.
He looped three fingers inside the guy’s jacket and held on for dear life.
The mercenary lost his balance as King snatched him and the two of them slammed into the jagged ground, smashing the breath from their lungs. They tumbled down the hillside, unable to slow themselves or get their bearings. King saw flashes of his surroundings mixed with rocks and gravel and branches crushing him, smashing him left and right. Pain flared across his body. Finally, he struck a boulder and lay still. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground and staggered to his feet, taking care not to lose purchase on the steep mountainside. Another fall like that would prove disastrous.
Enough damage had been done already.
It had been a while since he’d felt pain so intense. Before he made sense of where he’d landed and worked out where Afshar was, he took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm his heart rate. His head swam and veins bulged against his skin. Air came in shallow, rapid gasps. It seemed the agony bored into him from everywhere at once, like an old friend returning. Thankfully, he had years of experience dealing with this sort of thing.
Then again, so did Afshar.
The mercenary had come to a halt on the hillside in equally devastating fashion. His real hand was wrapped around a tree root a few dozen feet away. He was covered in dirt and blood. His prosthetic arm dangled uselessly. Traversing this kind of terrain was difficult enough for King. He couldn’t imagine trying it one-armed.
He set off fast, moving away from the boulder, groping for handholds on the steep ground, finding temporary purchase as he made his way towards Afshar. The Mercedes’ crash site was at least a hundred yards above them, buried somewhere in the scrub, well out of reach. He’d sacrificed his own wellbeing to take weapons out of the equation.
He fancied his chances in a fistfight against a one-armed man.
Perhaps not entirely fair.
But nothing was fair in this world.
As he got closer, he began to make out more details through the darkness. Afshar’s face was a bloody mess. His nostrils poured red. His eyes were half-closed. His breath came in rattling waves. King approached warily, wondering if the man was really as injured as he appeared to be.
He wasn’t.
King took a final step across the hill, knocking loose dirt down the slope, and came within range. As soon as he did, Afshar activated. The mercenary struck out with a steel-toed boot. The blow came so fast that King could do nothing to avoid it. He felt the blunt tip of the shoe sink into his ribs with considerable technique and force behind it. It hurt like all hell. He stumbled on the hillside and reared back, away from the point of impact, away from the pain. He slipped once, then again. He shot out a hand and found a clump of bushes growing out of the ground. It corrected his balance and he paused for a moment, breathing hard, wincing from the crippling pain coursing through his sternum.
He’d broken two ribs only a few months ago, deep inside an abandoned cruise ship in Venezuela. He knew the feeling well.
This wasn’t as severe, but it had certainly stunned him.
Afshar surged at him.
The half-dead look had been a ruse. The man was bloodied and bruised, just like King, but his consciousness had been preserved. He scrambled across the hillside with venom in his eyes, determined to finish what he’d intended to do on the road above.
King grit his teeth and knew he was in for a fight.
‘What about your payment?!’ he roared as Afshar charged at him.
It meant nothing. It was a vague, open-ended question that could have applied to a number of things, none of which King knew anything about. He’d thrown it out there with the sole purpose of creating a second’s hesitation, nothing more.
Afshar’s pace slowed. A confused look spread across his face for a brief instant — but in King’s world that was more than enough.
He used the branches to catapult himself across the space between them. He took two steps on the loose dirt, knowing his purchase would probably give, but that didn’t matter. He just had to get within range. He crashed into Afshar, disorientating him. He slipped two hands behind the guy’s
head and gripped his long greasy hair. Then he smashed the man’s forehead into the hillside.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Now he was truly incapacitated.
King knew that he had the upper hand. He used the change in momentum to shift his position. He leapt onto Afshar’s back and used all his weight to flatten him out against the dirt. At the same time, he wrapped his thighs around the man’s waist, known in grappling circles as “sinking the hooks in”. Afshar was going nowhere. King looped an arm under his neck, pressing into his throat, and cut off the blood flow to the brain.
Then he squeezed with everything he had.
It didn’t take long.
It was far from a pleasant experience, but it was the least painful way to kill the man with his bare hands. Despite Afshar’s hostile intentions, King found no pleasure in drawing out suffering unnecessarily. So he held the choke for a long minute after Afshar had slipped into unconsciousness, ensuring that he died. Holding it even a few seconds after the opponent passed out could cause massive brain damage.
King left no room for speculation.
He climbed off the body silently, the muscles in his arms screaming for rest. It took a certain level of energy in a life-or-death battle that he hadn’t tapped into for a long time. He found himself intensely tired. He dropped his butt onto the dirt near Afshar’s motionless corpse and looked out across the valley.
Adrenalin racing through his veins.
A trio of dead mercenaries on his hands.
How had it descended to this yet again?
CHAPTER 10
After such intense conflict, the Corsican evening was dead quiet.
King wasn’t sure how long he sat in the dirt, staring into space, thinking hard. It could have been hours for all he knew. He zoned out completely. Thoughts of violence and anger raced through his mind, sparked by what had occurred.
He couldn’t fathom how fast things had unfolded.
He’d been cruising peacefully through the night not five minutes earlier. Now, his whole world had been overturned. He glanced over to the dead mercenary beside him and shook his head.