by Matt Rogers
He inched toward the ground. Each move was delicate, measured, cautious. First he scraped his all-weather boots down the trunk, then loosened the tension in his hands and dragged them in the same direction. He took care not to take the skin off his palms as he manoeuvred his way down. He would need fresh hands when he made it to the bottom.
The knot in his gut began to subside as he made it within fifteen feet of the ground. Any fall from this distance would hurt, but would avoid the disastrous ramifications of serious injury.
He touched down on solid ground roughly two minutes after landing in the trees. If not for the subconscious timer in his head that invariably ticked away at all hours of the day, he would have thought he’d spent hours up there. He knew most sane men would fear the thought of dying at the hands of mercenaries more than sustaining a fall-related injury in the rainforest.
But most men did not have the experience that King did. He knew which would be less painful. And it wasn’t the wrong end of a bullet.
The duffel had landed in the shallow space between two logs covered in moss. He zigzagged around at least a dozen different plants to retrieve it. The sheer volume of undergrowth covering everything was stifling. King already felt the humidity eating away at him. Under his khakis, droplets of sweat trickled down his skin. It was uncomfortable as all hell, but comfortability sat at the bottom of his current list of priorities.
First — get his bearings.
He slung the duffel over one shoulder, wiped sweat off his brow and looked around. Three directions held nothing but endless rows of trees, clustered sporadically, wrapped in various ferns and plants. These ways barred easy travel. But to his left, King saw a break in the trees up ahead. The sound of running water sounded just past the break.
A river.
It would be the first step in locating the Phantoms’ facility. He set off at a brisk pace. As brisk as one could manage in the conditions. Each footfall had to be carefully placed. He had to ensure he didn’t turn his ankle and incapacitate himself before he even found the hostiles.
The sounds of the jungle were far different to anything he’d ever heard before. As the commotion of his crash-landing faded into obscurity, the catcalls of birds and shrieks of animals began to creep back into the surroundings. King recalled some vague fact he’d heard about the Amazon Rainforest holding hundreds of different bird species. He wasn’t sure exactly how many. But he heard every single one of them as he trekked. Their calls ranged from short, sharp chirps to long drawn-out hoots, each with their own personality and resonance.
He stopped concentrating on the birds when he stepped out onto the riverbank and made direct eye contact with two men holding automatic weapons.
CHAPTER 11
No one said a word. King’s pulse leapt through the roof.
He’d emerged from between two trees to see a murky river snaking away to the left and the right, flowing fast. The banks were built up with a mixture of churned dirt and washed-up sticks. The two men stood in front of a cluster of four rickety boats, each with a sizeable outboard motor on the back.
He watched as they both went through a period of momentary confusion, the type of emotion that pops up when you come face-to-face with what appears to be a soldier in territory you believed to be uninhabited. They looked similar. Olive skin, lean muscular builds, dirty complexions. Both clutched battered and rusty Kalashnikov AK-74s. And both had the same insignia branded on their upper arms. A ghastly skull, forged from their burnt skin.
A phantom.
One man had long straggly hair and wore a combat vest over his bare torso, which was slick with sweat. The other kept his hair short, cut close to the skull. He wore a tattered singlet, exuding confidence. Just from his demeanour, he appeared to be the dominant member of the pair. He stood slightly taller. His body language was more confident. His shoulders straighter. His reaction to the confrontation less panicked.
So King shot him first.
He reached down and ripped the Glock 19 out of its holster at his waist in one motion. Levelled it. Fired a round into the short-haired man’s skull before the other guy could blink. There was no blood, no guts, no graphic explosion of gore. Just a well-placed shot that crumpled the gangster, killing him instantly.
The sound of the Glock’s report shook the long-haired guy into action. He brought the barrel of his AK-74 up, his aim searching. King recognised he was a second away from death and ducked behind one of the thick palm trees lining the shore.
He felt the reverberations in the trunk as bullets tore into the wood on the other side. They whisked all around him, slicing through fronds and leaves to his left and right. Crouching behind cover, he couldn’t help but smile. The man shooting at him was unaccustomed to combat. He’d spent a significant length of time in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, armed to the teeth with nothing to fight against. When action finally struck, he was thoroughly unprepared. King knew within seconds his magazine would run dry. Overcompensating on his aggression would be his downfall.
Click.
There it was. The oppressing hail of gunfire stopped at once.
King paused for a beat, making sure the man was in the process of reloading by the time he stepped out. He heard nothing. It was time.
He brought the Glock up to shoulder height, arm stretched out rigid, and rounded the tree.
No-one there.
It took him by surprise. It wasn’t often that he miscalculated a situation. He’d fully expected the man to be standing in the exact place he’d last seen him, fumbling with a fresh magazine in the bottom of his Kalashnikov. Instead he saw nothing. An empty river bank. The trees on the other side of the river, rustling softly in the breeze. And at the very edge of his vision, a leg disappearing into the jungle just a dozen feet ahead.
He heard the sounds of branches and undergrowth snapping, rustling, shifting. Sounds that weren’t part of the natural atmosphere of the rainforest. He took a moment to appreciate the quick thinking of the mercenary.
King had underestimated him, and he’d capitalised on the situation. He’d run out of bullets and instantly run into the jungle, protected from returning fire by dense foliage. King didn’t know how close the facility was. For all he knew, if he didn’t kill the man, he would be surrounded by dozens of hostiles within minutes. He couldn’t let that happen.
Desperation got the better of him. Without control of the situation, King knew he had to act recklessly in order to swing the advantage in his favour. If he played it safe he would be dead in no time.
Massive instantaneous action was the only answer.
He dropped the duffel onto the forest floor and broke into a sprint, legs pumping like pistons. He didn’t care if he turned an ankle anymore. There were far greater things to worry about. The entire operation would be compromised if news was raised of his arrival. His main advantage was the fact that he was a ghost, and would be able to creep around the outskirts of the compound without a chance of detection. Scouting, planning, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
That plan would shortly be ruined.
So he threw caution to the wind and powered through the foliage, smashing aside low-hanging fronds and leaping obstacles dotting the ground. He determined his path by rough estimation. In parts of the jungle where the vegetation was this dense, seeing more than a few feet ahead was impossible. The rainforest obscured everything. King hoped he was heading in the right direction. He also hoped he could find his way back to the duffel bag later. It would have been better to bring it with him, but it was too heavy. Too cumbersome. With it on his back, he would never find the man.
It turned out he need not have worried.
He burst through a particularly hefty palm leaf, brushing it aside, and instantly felt a crushing blow in his mid-section. He lost his footing and sprawled against a log, careering backward. It slammed the breath from his lungs and he rolled aside, wheezing. It took him longer than it should have to realise he’d been tackled.
; The mercenary had waited for King to come charging out. Then he had charged in return. And it had worked.
King knew he’d lost the upper hand. The sudden impact sent the Glock in his hand spinning away, lost in the undergrowth.
‘Motherfucker,’ he spat at the mercenary.
The man smiled, revealing stained yellow teeth. Clearly there was a shortage of dental care in the Amazon Rainforest.
‘You’re dead,’ he said, confident. He bent down to pick up the AK-74 he’d left on the ground.
King scrambled to his feet, took a single leaping bound and launched. Revoking all care for his body. He would land hard, and it would be painful. But it didn’t matter. At least he wouldn’t be torn apart by Russian steel-core bullets.
He raised both legs and lashed out, double-footed, vicious. Putting all two hundred pounds of his bulk behind the kick. His boots struck the mercenary square in the solar plexus, transferring force through his hips to his knees to his feet to the guy’s torso. The mercenary let out an audible wheeze, clearly stunned by the force of the attack. He released his hold on the rifle as he skidded off his feet. He landed hard on his rear and his head bounced off a tree trunk, dazing him momentarily.
King landed with equally painful results.
He’d thrown himself almost horizontal with the attack and as a result came down on the small of his back on uneven ground. A white hot burst of pain flashed up his spine and for a moment he feared a serious injury. Two seconds later, he tested his movement and found he was okay.
It just hurt like hell.
He’d thrown the kick with reckless abandon but it had done its job. Guns were out of the equation. The Kalashnikov had spiralled away into the shrubs, rendered useless. It wouldn’t be found without a search. There was no way King would give the man time for one.
They rose simultaneously. King knew he had the upper hand now. He had an extra fifty pounds on the guy, at least. There were weight classes in professional combat sports for a reason. No matter how much of a skill gap, eventually it reached a point where the bigger man would always have the advantage. Luckily, King had both the skill, speed and size advantage over most men on the planet.
The man used shaking hands to draw a knife from a leather sheath at his waist. It was a coarse, serrated thing. Useful for hacking through vegetation. It wouldn’t help him now.
King faked a jab low then threw a head kick in a scything arc. He opened up his hips and turned at the waist and pivoted on his left heel and followed through, whipping his boot through the air with the force of a freight train. A move practiced on heavy bags thousands upon thousands of times, whether deep in the bowels of a United States government facility or in the small mixed martial arts gyms he frequented in his off time.
The countless hours he spent in solitude paid off.
The kick felt smooth. So well-practiced that it became something effortless, like an extension of himself. He recalled taking a heavy bag off its hinges with a similar kick earlier this year, tearing a large chunk of plaster out of the roof with it.
The man in front of him had been sold by the fake, and as a result his face was in the exact position King wanted it. The top of his foot connected with the mercenary’s jaw in just the right place. He heard delicate bones shatter and the man collapsed into the undergrowth, knocked unconscious by the kick. Simple as that. No bloody brawl, no battle for survival. Just a single well-placed, well-executed strike. It took nothing more. Real life was very different to the movies. The brain was a fragile thing, and concussions could be exploited if one knew the perfect place to hit.
The two hostiles were out of the equation. For now, he was safe.
CHAPTER 12
King took a deep breath and let the heat of combat wash off him. His heart rate slowed. He had trained it to do so. The action was over and it was time to conserve his energy. The adrenalin of life-or-death confrontations would exhaust him if he let it drag on any longer than was needed.
He stepped over to the last place he had seen the Kalashnikov fall. Brushed aside a mass of vegetation. Saw the glint of an automatic weapon, resting against the stalk of a plant. He bent down and scooped up the AK-74. It was a thing of beauty, exactly what he looked for in a gun. It didn’t matter what the conditions were. The rifle would always shoot. In rain, in mud, in snow, in the desert. No matter what, it would work.
King walked back to the unconscious man. Paused for a moment. Ejected the magazine and checked it. It was full. He couldn’t help but be impressed. The mercenary had reloaded the rifle while sprinting away from King. A level-headed move, that hadn’t helped him in the end. King aimed the Kalashnikov and fired a single bullet through the sleeping man’s skull.
He felt no emotion. This man would have skewered him with his serrated knife given the opportunity. Either finished him off there and then or let him bleed out in the jungle. If King showed him mercy and left him unconscious, he would no doubt die a slow painful death when he came to, impaired by the concussion and out of food and water. Being shot while asleep would be the most pain-free way to go. There was little mercy out here in operations like these, but King at least gave the man that. There was no need to add unnecessary pain and trauma. The head kick had taken him by surprise, so he had never seen his death coming.
Much like Brad.
King stopped and listened. He counted two unsuppressed shots in the last few minutes, from his Glock and the Kalashnikov. On top of that, the mercenary had fired a clip of at least fourteen bullets in his general direction back on the riverbank. If the Phantoms’ facility was close, alarms would already have been raised. Fully-armed men would be heading for him already. He probably wouldn’t stand a chance.
Nothing. No sound of yelling, or movement, or anything of the sort. The compound was out of earshot. So far, nothing had changed.
Then he looked down at the dead man’s body and saw a radio attached to his belt. A crappy old digital device with a short stocky antenna, all black, the frequency listed on the tiny screen. A small red light flashed on the side of it. He looked at the light and felt his gut tighten. He heard a brief crackle of static.
Shit, he thought.
The radio was in contact with someone. While running, the mercenary had switched it on. Someone at the compound had heard the commotion that had just transpired.
He bent down and extracted the device from the belt. Picked it up. Raised it to his ear. Sure enough, the distinct sound of white noise filtered through the tiny speaker. Someone was listening. King didn’t say a word.
‘Who are you?’
The voice came from the radio. Short, sharp, deep. In English, but heavily accented. Filled with menace and hostility. King was intruding on the territory of some dangerous, powerful people. They would be cruel if they caught him. They would be unrelenting. He could hear it in the voice. They had no idea who he was, but he was a threat, and he would be torn apart if they got their hands on him.
He smashed the radio against the nearest tree trunk, breaking it into pieces. Shards of plastic cascaded to the forest floor. The static abruptly ceased. But it was a futile effort, far too late. A move only enacted out of anger. The compound was onto him. They knew there was a hostile, somewhere in the jungle. That gave them an infinitely larger advantage.
King stood very still, contemplating just how exactly he would succeed when a force of heavily armed drug dealers knew someone was heading straight for them.
Short answer: he wouldn’t. Not without a healthy dose of luck. Nevertheless, there were no other options. The only way back to civilisation involved storming the compound. Without a satellite phone or radio or any other means of communication, he would be stranded out here until command sorted out the mess the operation had become. His involvement was highly classified as it was; only a handful of Pentagon defence chiefs knew he was assigned to the task. The ground forces reaching Iquitos in the coming hours would be oblivious to the fact that he had been inserted into the situation.
&nbs
p; First step was to locate the facility. King knew it was concealed from the air, under cover of branches. He knew it was somewhere nearby. That about covered the extent of his prior knowledge. Three quarters of the rainforest was concealed from any prying eyes above, so this information did little to assist.
He assumed the man he’d just killed had been heading back to base. In his reactionary state, he would have fled toward what was familiar before deciding to lay in wait and ambush King. King decided he would continue in that general direction.
First he discarded the AK-74 into the bushes and retrieved his Glock. The Kalashnikov was an effective, reliable weapon, yet ultimately rudimentary. King’s gear far outclassed the equipment wielded by the Phantoms. Before any further action, he knew he would need to retrieve his duffel. It had everything he needed. Without it, he was as good as dead.
It took ten minutes to locate. King did not let himself grow panicked. He quickly squashed down the fear in his gut. Irrational panic would do nothing but hinder his progress. He returned to the shore, found the tree riddled with bullets and combed through the surrounding vegetation with meticulous attention to detail. Eventually he found the bag, concealed under a cluster of ferns. He slung it back over his shoulder and headed north, the last direction the second mercenary had headed.
The time approached noon. Before returning to the claustrophobic conditions of the rainforest, King stared up at the sun and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the river. The sun’s rays beat down on him, drawing sweat from his pores, but he didn’t care. He revelled in the moment of calm before what he knew would be a particularly violent and chaotic storm.
Then he strode up the riverbank and ducked back into the jungle.