Lion

by Matt Rogers

  It was Tak’s only chance to say what was on his mind.

  ‘You are inexperienced,’ he hissed in Antoine’s ear. ‘And you don’t know how the world works. If we successfully get this money it will take months to launder it through the proper channels and actually gain access to it. What do you expect we do until then? Every triad member in Asia will be hunting for us if we kill their highest-paying, most reckless customer. The plan all along was to siphon money away from him and pin it on a foolish worker and a young kid. We don’t change that. Not now. Not ever. You got it?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Antoine muttered.

  ‘Until then, we do every damn thing Forrest wants us to do. Even if that means doing his dirty work. Like telling paying customers their purchase won’t arrive.’

  ‘Isn’t it ironic, though?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This guy is waiting for the girl we set free.’

  Tak sighed and tightened his grip on Antoine’s throat. ‘There’s no cameras down here, but if I hear you even whisper that again, I’ll kill you. Never mention that again.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Ready to take care of business?’

  ‘Yes,’ Antoine said, wheezing, turning red.

  Tak released his hold. ‘Let’s go, then. Pull yourself together. I don’t need you falling apart the first time you face adversity in your life. Everything’s been easy for you up to this point. You’re about to learn what hard work looks like.’

  ‘Don’t talk down to me like that,’ Antoine snarled, adjusting his collar. ‘My life hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘It has in comparison to some. Imagine I wasn’t there to help you up the bottom rungs of the triad. You’re young and impressionable and dumb. You’re not even thirty. You would have been bounced around and exploited until you quit or got yourself killed.’

  Antoine said nothing.

  ‘This is a new level. We have enemies everywhere. Pay attention to what you say. Pay attention to who’s listening.’

  ‘Yeah, got it. Relax. Let’s get this done.’

  Tak nodded. ‘Want me to do the talking?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Watch and learn. I have a feeling this guy won’t be happy. It’s a sick world down here. You might not be used to this either. Throw your morals out the window.’

  Antoine scoffed. ‘What morals? We threw them out when we got into this business.’

  ‘True. But this is a slightly darker level. You ever dealt with the people who pay for this shit?’

  ‘No. I just knew what was going on.’

  ‘Then get ready.’

  They set off down the corridor again, surrounded by lavish decor yet draped in a darkness that seemed to indicate all was not as it seemed in this section of the casino complex. Doorways along the hall led to plush rooms with hundred-thousand dollar carpets and designer furniture imported from European villages, but it all seemed like a front to mask a pit of degradation.

  They reached a closed metal door at the end of the hallway and Tak gently pushed it open, stepping through into a smaller room.

  Antoine followed suit.

  A plump European man with a greasy comb-over sat on one of the couches, the armpits of his collared shirt sporting yellow pit stains and a line of sweat dotting his brow. He reeked of a desperation that Tak despised — but Tak didn’t let his feelings show.

  A steely haze settled over his features and he sat down on the couch opposite, gesturing for Antoine to follow suit.

  ‘You don’t have what I paid for,’ the European man said in English, his Spanish accent thick but his words clear. He was conversing in the only common language they shared.

  Tak had no problem speaking English.

  ‘No. We don’t. That’s what we’re here to talk about.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘We’ve run into some difficulties. She won’t be around for some time. We apologise on behalf of Mr. Forrest for the delay.’

  And we were the ones to cause the difficulties, Tak thought.

  But what Forrest, along with the man in front of them, didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  ‘I paid a lot of money to be here,’ the guy said, sweating harder.

  ‘Like I said, we apologise. Stay another day. We’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ the man demanded.

  He started to lean forward.

  Tak burst off the couch and swung an uppercut into the underside of the guy’s jaw, knocking a couple of teeth loose and sending him splaying back across the cushions with a bloody mouth and watering eyes. He crumpled under the force of the blow, stunned by pain and surprise. Tak continued to his feet, looming down over the man.

  ‘It’s going to have to be good enough,’ he said.

  Inwardly, he scolded himself for allowing his emotions to break through the hardened exterior. Long ago Tak had succumbed to the reality of the world, and that meant killing people who sometimes didn’t deserve it — but this was just sick. He found it tough to put up with such a morally depraved situation, even if it was in the interests of Peter Forrest’s bottom line to do so.

  The fat man spat blood across the expensive upholstery and shrank away from Tak, cowering on the couch. ‘Just wait until I tell Peter what—’

  Tak backhanded him across the cheek, putting enough weight into the slap for a resounding crack to echo through the otherwise-empty room. The guy let out a feeble cry of protest and touched a hand to his face. One side of it was already swelling.

  ‘Just wait until I track down your family and friends and tell them all in explicit detail exactly what you’re doing here at Mountain Lion.’

  ‘You can’t do that. You don’t know me, and I was promised total—’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Marco.’

  The guy stiffened at the sound of his real name. ‘How…?’

  ‘You will put up with any delays we need, and you won’t say a fucking word to Peter Forrest about any of this. And if you do, I’ll simply pay him to let me do what I want to you. You know as well as I do that money is Forrest’s game, and I’ve got plenty of it.’

  ‘I’ll outbid you.’

  ‘By the time you try, I’ll have already cut your balls off and fed them to you. Go back to your hotel room and stay there until I tell you otherwise.’

  ‘Do you need my room number?’

  ‘Already got it. Clean yourself up.’

  20

  As they hurried down the second stairwell, Slater stared at the new Beretta in his palm and started to align the information he’d received into a somewhat cohesive picture.

  ‘Outside Mountain Lion,’ he said to Shien, ‘I think Peter Forrest was trying to get you back.’

  ‘When all those men grabbed me?’ she said, her voice hollow in the space yet still timid.

  ‘Yeah. The triad let you go to do this. Forrest wants you back. So the question is — what were you doing in his possession in the first place?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Will. They put a lot of bad things in my arm to keep me drowsy. I don’t remember much.’

  ‘You said you were kept in a room.’

  ‘Different rooms. I kept getting moved, but it’s all so blurry.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘No. I feel like they were preparing me for something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Slater froze on one of the steps and clamped a hand down on Shien’s shoulder. ‘Hang on.’

  They went still in the gloom, surrounded by leaking walls and a curving, rusting banister. Slater guessed there were two or three more floors to go before they reached ground level, but something had set him on edge — he sensed some kind of hostile presence on the landing below. It wasn’t anything palpable, but after this much experience in the field there were certain subtle cues that triggered his survival instinct and caused his awareness levels to skyrocket.

  ‘Hol
d this,’ Slater whispered to Shien, and passed her the bulky laptop.

  She took it in her arms.

  The landing several steps below them opened out into a third-floor corridor, eerily similar to the hallway they’d just come from. It was complete with damp walls and flickering lights and all manner of features to indicate nothing had been spent on renovations for decades. Slater crouched low, taking the Beretta in a double-handed grip, and slunk down to the landing.

  The ground levelled out, providing him a clear view down the hallway. To the side the stairwell twisted away, continuing on its path to ground level. Slater was milliseconds away from telling Shien the coast was clear when he spotted the doorway a dozen feet into the corridor, open just a crack.

  Slater stared hard into the darkness beyond, and thought he saw the subtlest shift of movement.

  One of the thugs hanging back?

  He wasted no time. Hesitation led to the deaths of talented men, so instead he fired a shot directly through the wooden door, sending splinters flying and creating a noise loud enough to shock even the most battle-tested veterans. From there he took off down the corridor, closing the gap like a raging bull. The pain in his damaged knee was nowhere to be found. Once again, adrenalin and determination masked all superficial injuries.

  When unsure, resort to the usual tactics.

  Speed.

  Aggression.

  All-out assault.

  The guy on the other side of the door didn’t have time to shut it completely — he was too busy recoiling from the noise of the gunshot. Slater barged the door open. It slammed directly into the body on the other side, halting Slater in his tracks. He reared back and shouldered into it again, then a third time.

  Finally, the person on the other side shrank away, refusing to take a fourth dose of blunt force trauma. Slater bundled his way inside…

  … and a fist crashed into the sweet spot above his left ear.

  He bit his lip in an attempt to ride out the sudden disorientation. A timid voice in the back of his head begged for retreat — he was badly hurt, and the sooner he accepted that, the greater his chance of survival.

  But retreat would send he and Shien back into the heights of the apartment complex. From there they would be sitting ducks, cornered at every turn, cordoned into certain sections and pinned down in the disgusting corridors until they were overpowered and overwhelmed.

  So Slater pressed forward in the face of adversity, even though in all likelihood it would spell a death wish. He narrowly avoided a second swinging punch — knuckles scythed through the air toward the bridge of his nose but he hurled himself away from the blow at an unnatural angle.

  He crashed into the opposite wall of the interior hallway, rolled off the surface, and got his bearings.

  An Asian man stood across from him, dressed in khakis and a loose-fitting long-sleeved cotton shirt. His skin was dark bronze, and judging by the force with which he’d rattled Slater with the punch, he guessed the man was from Thailand. Despite having landed a decent blow, the guy looked similarly disoriented — it was then that Slater noticed the Beretta handgun lying between them, smashed out of the man’s grip by the force of the door slamming into him three consecutive times.

  For a moment Slater thought it was his own weapon, but he glanced down and noticed his own Beretta still resting firmly in his palm — a palm slick with cold sweat. If he’d been operating at full capacity, Slater would have fired a round through the man’s temple in the blink of an eye, but the overbearing ramifications of the concussive blow were revealing themselves.

  Move! he screamed at himself.

  He couldn’t.

  He started to raise his arm to line up a shot but his limbs moved horrendously slow, failing to respond to his commands in time. His vision wobbled as he lifted the Beretta, and it felt as if he were moving through quicksand. Mentally exhausted from the strain, he kept the gun scything upward in an arc that would bring the barrel up to aim between the man’s eyes.

  Too late.

  The Asian guy threw a twisting side kick that caught Slater in the wrist, crunching his fingers against the Beretta’s trigger guard and sending the gun twisting out of his palm.

  Slater made to squeeze off a wild shot even as the kick crashed into him but he simply couldn’t find the trigger in time. The Beretta cascaded away, and Slater stumbled back as the force of the lashing boot transferred into him.

  Definitely from Thailand, he thought.

  As if all his problems were bubbling to the surface at once, his knee decided to give out as he leant away from a follow-up kick. He lost function in his right leg as it buckled, sending him careening awkwardly into the plaster wall behind him.

  Thankfully, it held.

  Plunging straight through the damp material would have placed him in a predicament he wouldn’t have been able to come back from, so he silently thanked the heavens as he bounced back into range.

  Which proved a ridiculous thing to thank anyone for, because it allowed the Thai man to size up another kick and lash the same lead leg through the air, aiming for Slater’s throat.

  It would have caved his larynx in if it had connected, leaving him to suffocate, but Slater tapped into ten years worth of mixed martial arts training and employed all the tools he had available.

  He changed levels, leaning the majority of his weight on his good leg to ensure he didn’t buckle at the worst possible moment. By dropping into a crouch he avoided the man’s shin bone, sensing the air displaced above his head as the kick whistled through empty space with the speed of a seasoned practitioner.

  From there Slater shot into range and seized hold of a single-leg takedown, wrapping both arms around the sole limb the man had on the ground. It was a simple enough procedure to lever his weight through to the leg and throw the guy off-balance.

  Together, the pair sprawled to the grimy carpet.

  Your stand-up’s good, Slater thought. What about your ground game?

  Slater had a third-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and he savoured the moments in no-holds-barred, hand to hand combat when he sensed weakness in an opponent. If they weren’t well-rounded, he would crush them.

  And a knee injury meant nothing on the ground.

  Like a true amateur, the Asian guy rolled onto his stomach in an attempt to lever himself to his feet as fast as possible. In theory it made sense, but Slater needed the slightest opportunity to capitalise, and the man gave it to him on a silver platter.

  He pounced on the guy’s back, wrapped both legs around his waist, and wrenched a meaty forearm around the man’s throat. The guy had left his neck exposed, failing to tuck his chin or employ any kind of defence against the hold.

  He’d sentenced himself to death by failing to defend himself for a fraction of a second.

  The way life goes, Slater thought.

  There was nothing left to do but squeeze. The outcome was inevitable, and as he applied a vicious barrage of pressure to the guy’s throat he realised that too. The guy somehow managed to get to his feet — still wearing Slater like a backpack — and used momentum to twist on the spot, smashing Slater side-on into the nearest wall.

  It hurt, but Slater wasn’t letting go of the choke unless someone severed his arms at their sockets.

  He would take anything this guy could dish out, because the man’s consciousness was rapidly fading and in seconds he would be completely out.

  Next, the guy scrabbled at Slater’s forearm, digging his nails into the skin and attempting to peel the arm off his neck.

  Not a chance.

  The man succumbed to the lure of unconsciousness in messy fashion, refusing to submit until the final moments. His legs turned heavy and Slater sensed him about to drop as his senses faded. With one foot, Slater reached back and pushed off the wall, so the momentum carried the guy to the ground stomach-first. He slammed into the carpet, twitching and kicking but ultimately out cold.

  Slater saw no need for unnecessary sufferi
ng, so he tightened his grip up a notch, tapping into the reserves of energy one could only locate in times of maximum exertion. Nothing tested his mental resolve like this — doing what would minimise suffering over what felt like the right thing to do. If he left the man alive it would only be a matter of time before he came awake and made another attempt on Slater’s life. Besides, all was fair in these scenarios — the man had tried to kill Slater, so Slater found himself unburdened by the thought of finishing the job.

  Just the nature of the beast, he thought.

  He kept pressure on the throat for a long sixty seconds before the unconscious man underneath him turned to a corpse. There was a subtle shift in the atmosphere — Slater had enough experience in the field to understand what it meant — and he released his grip on the guy’s neck to find his breathing had ceased entirely.

  It had been a relatively painless death. The transition from alertness to unconsciousness had only taken a couple of seconds, and the man would have been blissfully ignorant to anything beyond that.

  Slater peeled himself off the body and shook out his arm. Operating at one hundred percent capacity for over a minute, all the muscles in his forearm had effectively died. Feeling would return in a matter of minutes accompanied by sharp pins and needles, but until then Slater was left dangling one limb uselessly by his side.

  With his good hand, he snatched the Asian man by the collar and dragged him into the adjoining bathroom. The lights were out, and Slater kept them that way.

  Shien had witnessed enough death for the time being.

  He pulled the door shut, hiding the body from sight, and called the young girl into the apartment.

  21

  Shien pottered into the room, her eyes darting in seemingly every direction at once. There was no doubt that she’d heard the commotion — violent fights to the death left no room for imagination — but she seemed surprised by Slater’s half-hearted attempt to hide the body.