by Matt Rogers
Mostly, he ran Black Force.
King worked under the command of Black Force. No-one knew who they were, for good reason. Their forces consisted of only a few men, hand-picked from either Delta or DEVGRU. They were allowed to attempt what any official entity would write off as impossible, because they did not exist to any official entity. It gave them absolute discretion. They were men who had devoted their entire lives to the military. King did not know the others. He showed up, completed a mission and collected his paycheque. Because they had no books, Black Force paid handsomely. And it was all run by Lars Crawford, a brilliant mind who had been deemed too valuable to remain in his position as Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. His work was stellar, but he often overstepped the line. So the President took him off the record and gave him his own office away from prying eyes. Where he could accomplish great things that no-one would ever know about.
According to documentation he had retired to Wisconsin after leaving the Marine Corps.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he said. ‘You disappeared, for fuck’s sakes. Delta’s currently cleaning up the airfield you left, trying to piece together where you went.’
‘I continued with the mission,’ King said. ‘I have one of them with me. Ben Norton. The other two are dead. They’d all be dead if I had waited. I need extraction, but there’s still a few hostiles left in the compound.’
‘There’s four Delta boys at the airfield. They have a CH-53.’
‘A Super Stallion?’
‘Yeah. I managed to secure one. It’ll help.’
‘It’s getting dark. Wait until morning. There’s no point losing any men by rushing it.’
‘Do you have supplies?’
‘No. But we’ll manage.’
‘Are you hurt?’
King looked down at himself. The relentless pace of his time awake had caused him to ignore his injuries. Now, he studied them. The glue in his wrist had dried solid. He could use his hand, meaning that there was no significant nerve damage. The taut bandage around his shoulder was soaked through with blood, but once again he still had function. In pain, yes. But not paralysed. He would make it through another day.
‘I’m fine,’ he said.
‘How’s the hostage? Files say he’s nineteen.’
‘He’ll survive.’
‘Okay. They’ll arrive at 0700. We have your position from the GPS on the phone you’re using. Is that the exact place you want extraction?’
‘Come to this exact location and find the clearest place to land. If Delta has a Super Stallion, we’ll hear it from a mile away.’
‘Good luck, King.’
He hung up. No wasted words. Nothing unnecessary said. Just what needed to be done, and how long it would take. Conversations with Lars were nothing but efficient.
They had talked on loudspeaker, so Norton had heard the whole thing. For a moment, the boy smiled. A rare expression in a time like this.
‘I didn’t think I would make it out of there,’ he said.
King began to speak, but a strange emotion sent a pang through his chest.
The feeling of regret.
He bowed his head into his hands and tried his hardest not to cry. Frustration swelled inside him. He felt Norton rest a hand on his shoulder.
‘Um, Mr. King, are you okay?’
He nodded. ‘I think I fucked this one up, Ben.’
‘How?’
‘I shouldn’t have come here. Two of you are dead. If we’d just waited, maybe things would have been different.’
‘You didn’t fuck anything up,’ Norton said. ‘If you’d waited any longer, they would have done things to us that they were waiting to do. Mabaya said that some of them wanted to…’ He trailed off. ‘You know, I didn’t think there was that much savagery in the world.’
‘You just haven’t seen it before.’
‘I’ve studied it. We have all sorts of theories on terrorism and crime in international relations. I just … never thought about what it would actually look like. I’m sheltered, I guess.’
King shook his head. ‘You’re normal. Not many people choose to confront that stuff their whole lives.’
‘It must take a toll.’
He shrugged. ‘I can deal with it, mostly. I’d rather be in these situations and seeing these things and helping people than ignoring what’s happening and letting them die. That’s why I do what I do.’
‘I could never do that.’
‘Not many people could.’
It was almost fully dark. King couldn’t see the sun dip below the horizon, but the sky melted from an incandescent orange to a stark grey. The jungle seemed to come alive around this time. The noise of wildlife echoed all around them. Birds hooting, insects buzzing. Somewhere in the distance, water flowed.
‘Should we head further out?’ Norton said.
‘I don’t think—’
A few dozen feet behind the alcove, a cacophony of shouting rose up. Two sharp discharges exploded, resonating off the trees. A spray of wild bullets passed over their heads.
‘Yes, I think we should,’ King said.
They took off into the night.
CHAPTER 27
Despite the panic of fleeing enemy gunfire, King knew he had to make sure not to grow careless. If he and Norton got lost, no amount of backup would ever save them. The Amazon Rainforest was so vast and unexplored that losing their way would mean a death sentence.
As they ran, King used his good arm to break low-hanging branches. The snapped twigs fell to the forest floor beneath them. It would serve as a rudimentary path back should they need it.
The darkness became an advantage to them. Slowly, the sounds of the remaining Phantoms grew quieter and quieter. When King noticed this he grabbed Norton once again and stood deathly still, listening intently.
The noise began to fade.
‘They lost us,’ he said. ‘We’re good.’
The Amazon at night was a different beast. Keeping track of his location was hard enough with the assistance of daylight, but now it was practically impossible. King found himself surrounded by looming trees, all resembling each other. He could barely remember which direction led back to the compound.
‘We should bunker down here,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep. They won’t spend much more time searching. It’ll be useless when it’s fully dark.’
There was no camp to set up, for they had no supplies on them. King’s backpack was a mile away, tucked away somewhere in the dark jungle on the other side of the compound. He would never find it, at least until morning. Even then it would be tough to locate.
They found the most comfortable patch of ground and lay down amongst the ferns. After the chaos of the day, King would take any rest he could. He didn’t care about a fire, or a good meal, or clean drinking water. He just wanted to avoid being shot at for a few hours.
‘I’m scared, King,’ Norton said after a lengthy period of silence.
King paused. He could hear unsuppressed fear in the kid’s voice. He didn’t blame him. To Norton, their current predicament would be unfathomable. Just a few days ago all the kid had known was the inside of an embassy, and the worst of his worries had probably been what job offerings would result from an internship in Peru. Now he lay buried in the cover of jungle undergrowth, heart pounding in his chest, sweat on his brow, praying desperately that merciless gangsters didn’t find him and kill him … or worse.
‘I am too,’ King said. ‘Believe me.’
‘There’s no way! You said you want to be in these situations. Can you teach me how? I can’t handle this.’
‘It’s not something you can teach, kid. It’s not as simple as that. I started just as nervous as you are. Over time you can learn to suppress it. But it never really goes away.’
‘How did you end up volunteering for missions like this…?’ Norton said. Then he waited, as if hesitant to ask a question that he didn’t want to come off as rude.
‘Say it,’ King said. ‘I w
on’t mind.’
‘Did you come from a bad home?’
King chuckled. ‘It would make sense if I did, wouldn’t it? An orphan, thrown around foster care. That’d explain my decision perfectly.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Quite the opposite. I was two years into a law degree when I decided to sign up for the military. And my goal was to become someone like this.’
‘W—’ Norton didn’t have a response to that.
‘Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be the first not to understand. In fact, it’d be strange if you did understand.’
‘This isn’t natural,’ Norton said. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer not having to worry about whether you’ll see the next day?’
‘Not really. I thrive on that feeling.’
‘How? Because right now my instincts are telling me to curl up into a ball and cry and wait for it to all be over.’
‘I don’t have an exact answer. I never will. I get energy from the thrill of near-death experiences. I only feel like I’m alive when I’m scared.’
‘So it’s not about helping people?’
‘It is. But everyone cares about their own life, too. If you don’t, you’re a liar. I just happen to be impartial to danger, so I can do what I do without a second thought.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Then you won’t get what I’m going to do tomorrow morning.’
He heard Norton sit up in the dark. ‘Please don’t say…’
‘I’m going back there, kid. I left Mabaya alive. And there’s still five or six Phantoms, somewhere out there.’
‘Can’t we just run? Please?’
‘If I die, you just hunker down and wait for the sound of the chopper. The backup is arriving in a CH-53 Super Stallion, so you’ll hear it from a mile away. Largest chopper in the United States military.’
‘Can’t they take care of the men left in that place?’
‘They could, but I don’t want to risk any casualties on their end. I’m the one who chose to proceed with the mission. I don’t care if I die. I care if they do.’
Norton said nothing for a while. In the far distance, the faint echo of barking commands crept through the jungle.
Mabaya’s awake, King thought. And mad as hell.
‘I still don’t get it,’ Norton said. ‘But please promise me I’m going to be okay.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ King said. ‘I can’t say the same for myself.’
‘Why can’t you just forget about it?’
‘If I do nothing … and one of the Delta soldiers gets killed in the firefight…’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t live with myself.’
‘It’s not your responsibility.’
‘I know. But I’m making it mine. I want to.’
‘But—’
‘You won’t change my mind, Ben.’
They lay on the jungle floor in mutual silence, listening to the sounds of the Amazon all around them. Incessant shrieking and hooting and hollering of wildlife disturbed the quiet, making King restless. He rolled onto his side and grimaced. The rest gave him time to concentrate on his injuries. To feel the throbbing pain in his wrist. To feel the nerve endings tweaking in his shoulder. He longed for another burst of adrenaline. That feeling melted away all others. There was nothing to concentrate on but the heat of combat.
I must be sick, he thought. Maybe he was. Norton was right. This wasn’t how normal people lived. In the darkness, he shrugged. As long as he could save people like Norton in the process, he didn’t care if he was different. Sometimes, different was a benefit.
He felt the stock of the Taurus PT92. It calmed him a little. There were twelve bullets left in the chamber. He’d fired three through the compound’s window when they were escaping.
There was a lot he could do with twelve bullets. The Phantoms would find out how much in the morning.
Once again, King found himself thinking about death. What if he was killed in battle tomorrow morning? He imagined the scenario, and waited for his brain to respond. Some kind of feeling, some kind of worry.
Nothing.
That in itself was worrying. He did not care whether he lived or died tomorrow.
‘Norton, you awake?’ he said.
Silence.
In the relative comfort of the foliage, the kid had crashed. King didn’t blame him. Twenty-four hours of constant tension would do that. In a moment of relative safety, he’d fallen instantly asleep. King could feel the same effect beginning to affect himself. He reached for the digital watch on his wrist and thumbed the buttons on one side of its bulk. Three beeps told him what he needed to know. There was an alarm set for five in the morning. He knew he didn’t need it, but it was precautionary.
He settled back into the fronds, letting them wrap around him. He thought he felt a bug crawl across his earlobe. He flitted it away and winced at the searing pain in his shoulder. What if he woke up unable to move his arm?
He would worry about that in the morning. He closed his eyes and felt the murky haze of sleep take over.
CHAPTER 28
His eyes flitted open seconds before the alarm went off. A strange phenomenon, and one that he couldn’t easily explain. His brain seemed to sense when combat was imminent. When he wasn’t on a mission, he never woke up when he wanted.
It was still dark, but not the kind of jet-black that came in the middle of the night. A faint sliver of blue crept into the sky above. King looked up at the trees overhead and could make out the outline of the branches against the sky. There was just enough light to navigate around. Which is exactly what he would need to do.
His heart rate ever so slowly began to quicken. A feeling he would never get tired of. As he got to his feet, Norton stirred beside him.
‘Are you leaving?’
King nodded. ‘Afraid I am.’
‘What do I do?’
‘Do what I told you. Wait for me to come back. If I don’t, just stay here. Backup will arrive in exactly two hours. Delta is never late. No matter what happens you’ll be safe. I promise.’
‘Thank you, King. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.’
‘Happy to help. You know why.’
King gripped Norton’s shoulder with his good hand and squeezed tight. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘I’d prefer if you didn’t die in the next two hours. I thought we would be friends.’
King smiled. ‘I’ll try not to.’
He tucked the Taurus into his belt, turned and headed into the trees.
As he walked, he did his best to ignore his wounds. Medical assistance would be there in hours. He had to keep the pain at bay long enough to achieve his objective, then he could let it consume him. Until then…
His first destination was the river. There was something he needed there. Just enough light had crept into the sky to make the path ahead faintly visible. It enabled him to skirt around obstacles, avoiding fallen logs and dips in the ground and twisting roots. His surroundings made claustrophobia inevitable. No matter how resolutely King acted, it was impossible to shake the knot in his gut. The fear that he would get lost and slowly succumb to dehydration.
He need not have worried. His sense of direction was impeccable. It took less than ten minutes before he saw the riverbank ahead, sloping away from the jungle. He exited the rainforest and took a moment to watch the river.
Although light had begun to creep over the horizon, moonlight still shone across the water. He saw the flowing streams pulsate slightly, spurred on by the slope of the land. It was a serene sight. He knew the calm wouldn’t last long.
He had a job to do.
Down by the shore tiny waves lapped at the dirt, creating a stretch of mud that ran for miles in either direction. King crept down to the water, taking caution not to slip. After being shot twice, he was in enough trouble already. Impaired movement was the last thing he wanted to add to that.
In the dawn light he scooped out a thick dollop of mud and smeared it over his neck. With both ha
nds he spread the cold gunk over his cheeks, his forehead, his chin. He ran it through his hair. He covered his exposed arm, missing the sleeve that was now tied tight around the wound in his shoulder. By the time he was finished and the mud had caked dry against his skin, all his exposed flesh was entirely brown. It would blend him into the undergrowth.
They’d never see him coming.
He withdrew the Taurus from his waistband and clicked the safety off. It was a sound ingrained into his memory. It always signified impending pain and death and destruction. The pre-eminent noise of approaching combat. It helped him enter a dark place, a place he knew he had to go to achieve what he wanted. At the compound there could be no hesitation. He couldn’t stop to think about what he was doing. Gunfights were instinctive. There would be no mercy from either side.
He snuck back into the jungle and let the dense vegetation envelop him. He felt invisible, and he knew he would be hard to spot. It took him five minutes to find the compound. At first he thought he never would. All the trees blurred into one another, until it felt like he was walking through a kaleidoscope of green. He wasn’t sure he would ever find his way, until the trees cleared ahead and he saw the outline of the warehouse in the distance.
He dropped to his stomach and crept slowly toward the compound. Amongst the ferns he was a ghost. They would not see him until it was too late. He saw movement in his peripheral vision and stopped crawling. There were three men on this side of the clearing. They patrolled the ground between the main warehouse and the jungle in a haphazard, predictable fashion. Clearly untrained. King smiled and silently thanked Mabaya for failing to train his men properly.
As if on cue, the man himself rounded the corner of the warehouse. The right side of his face had incipient swelling, with splotches of purple dotted across his cheek.
An after-effect of King’s boot.
The three gangsters turned to their leader, all facing away from King. Now would be the opportune time to strike, but he did not yet have a proper read on the situation. He would wait a little longer. Observe and assess.