by Matt Rogers
They reached the far side of the clearing just as shouts rose from where they had come. King knew what was coming. He reached back, wrapped a hand around Norton’s shirt again and threw him violently into the undergrowth. Then he dived in himself.
Just in time.
More bullets. These ones unquestionably close. Above the racket of discharging rounds, Norton let out a yell of pain and fright. King looked up and saw one of the bullets had grazed his shoulder, tearing out a small chunk of skin. Blood flowed from the hole in his shirt. It would hurt like hell, most definitely. But it wasn’t the worst injury he could have sustained.
King waited for a lapse in the gunfire. When it came, he seized Norton and powered forward, putting distance between them and the clearing. He ignored Norton’s cries of protest.
‘This is for your own good,’ he muttered as he spurred the boy ahead.
Before too long there came the familiar noise of the Super Stallion from somewhere near the trees ahead. The deep thrumming that King could feel in his chest. Once again, he noted it came from the same level that they were on, meaning it had descended for the second time.
He hoped for Norton’s sanity that it stayed put.
As soon as the situation became apparent, King swore under his breath. He saw where the Super Stallion was, and realised he wasn’t sure if Norton could go through with what they would have to do next.
Up ahead, the rainforest floor abruptly ceased. King realised that the whole time they had been heading for the edge of an enormous, sloping valley. This particular section of the rim was nothing but jagged cliff-face. There was a drop — large enough to be fatal — to the valley floor far below. The Super Stallion hovered in thin air, only a few feet away from the cliff’s edge. There was no room to land on the cliff itself. The tree line ran right up to where the rock fell off into nothingness. The chopper’s fuselage door lay wide open. Welcoming them.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Norton said as the realisation dawned. ‘King, I can’t jump. I can’t fucking do that. I’d rather be shot again.’
‘Trust me … no you wouldn’t.’
‘I—’
‘Shut up, Ben. You’re jumping. It’s not even that far. Ready?’
‘No.’
‘Too bad.’
King made sure his grip was tight on Norton’s shirt. If he let go, the boy might not commit to the action. Then he would be shot by the pursuing Phantoms, or worse … taken alive.
He broke into a sprint for the edge of the cliff. Norton screamed as he was dragged along. King felt his knuckles go white. He embraced the stomach drop that came with such a brash decision. Fear of heights was a strange phenomenon. Getting shot at was a hundred times more dangerous than what he was about to do, yet this made him sweat. This made his skin crawl.
He reached the tipping point. Now there was no time to stop, even if he wanted to. If he slowed down he would skid off the edge of the cliff. He took another few steps, then thrust Norton out in front. The boy leapt with everything he had, clearing the distance between the cliff and the chopper easily. He crashed down on the floor of the fuselage.
King followed in his path, taking a deep breath and launching off the edge. A stray bullet from the trees behind made him flinch as he jumped. Instinctively, he looked down. His gut sank. The trees were nothing but dots far below. For a fleeting moment he arced through the air, the wind battering against him. Then he joined Norton inside the chopper, landing hard on his knees and skidding to a halt. Safe and sound.
It was only then that he realised the interior was empty. The four Delta Force soldiers were nowhere to be seen. He should have put two and two together earlier, but adrenalin had caused his attention to waiver. He hadn’t even taken a glance inside the Super Stallion before he jumped.
He rolled over. Perhaps the pilot could explain.
As the cockpit came into view, he knew the pilot never would.
The pilot was dead.
His corpse lay beside King, a fresh bullet wound resting between his eyes. The small circular hole dripped a steady stream of blood, already pooling around his head. King looked past him, into the cockpit. He saw a man in the pilot’s seat, and instantly recognised him. There was no mistaking the chiseled brown arms, the dreadlocks, the permanent sneer.
Mabaya.
CHAPTER 32
King made to scramble to his feet, but Mabaya stopped him in his tracks with a single gesture. The man leant over and brought his left arm into view, previously hidden behind the cockpit wall. King saw a small round object clasped between his fingers.
‘Holy shit,’ he muttered.
Mabaya was holding a live grenade. He couldn’t make out the exact type, but there was no mistaking what it was. The safety pin had been withdrawn and Mabaya’s fingers were pressed hard against the lever. If he released them even slightly, the grenade would detonate. The Super Stallion would be nothing but a flaming wreckage within seconds.
Norton saw the grenade too. He visibly paled, but didn’t make a sound. Perhaps too shocked to speak.
‘Didn’t see that one coming, did you?’ Mabaya said, cackling. ‘Ah, you were so close, buddy. So close. You too, you little prick.’ He nodded at Norton.
‘You’d kill yourself just to stop us?’ King said. ‘We just wanted to leave.’
Mabaya turned to face him. There was pure, blind hatred in his eyes.
‘You just wanted to leave?’ he snarled. ‘If you just wanted to leave, you would have left already. But you didn’t. You had to come back and destroy fucking everything we’d been working for. So yes, I would kill myself right now to stop you. I’m gonna go land back at base and rip your fucking limbs off one at a time.’
‘Maybe I’ll just charge you now. Save the torture.’
‘But you won’t, American. I know you too well. You’re the hero type. You always think there’s a way out of everything. So you’ll do whatever the fuck I say as long as I’m holding this thing.’
King sank to the floor. ‘How did you even—’
‘Ah, you thought I was just some dumb druggie, huh? I’ve served my time, same as you. Even flew a few helis in the Peruvian military. You caught me by surprise in the holding cell, but that doesn’t make me a rookie. I lay in wait for the chopper, back in the clearing. I knew where they’d land. They opened the doors without a care in the world. I put a whole magazine into the four of them. The pilot wasn’t armed. Finished him off with my sidearm. None of them ever saw it coming.’
King pressed his fingers into his eyes. Maybe if he’d just left the compound alone, none of this would have happened…
‘What’s wrong?’ Mabaya said. ‘Thinking about your friends? I saw their badges, by the way. Delta Force. I thought those guys were all smart and shit. A drug dealer outsmarted all of you! You must feel pretty fucking stupid right about now.’
Mabaya worked the controls and the Super Stallion began to move. He flew it low over the treetops, heading for the compound.
‘Back to base,’ he muttered, barely audible. ‘Back to base we go. You two are so dead.’
‘Mabaya,’ King said, interrupting the man’s ramblings.
He looked back. ‘What, you pig?’
‘You said you used to be a soldier. I’m a soldier. Man to man, we can work this out. Leave the kid out of it.’
Mabaya wagged a finger on his free hand. ‘I left the army to get away from men like you, chicken shit. Men who think they’re so fucking superior. So noble. Leave the boy out of it. Waagh!’ He mocked King in a high-pitched tone, feinting distress. ‘You will both die. Slowly. Nothing’s fair out here. We’re in the jungle, baby. Money’s all that matters, and you fucked up what we were rolling in. Now you’ll pay.’
King looked out the open fuselage door. In the distance, a plume of black smoke spiralled into the clouds. The warehouse, still ablaze. Quickly, he calculated their position based on the compound’s location. If he was right, they should be over the…
He got to his feet.
>
Instantly Mabaya spun in his seat. ‘Get the fuck back on the floor or I’ll let go.’ He waved the grenade for added effect.
‘But you won’t,’ King said.
‘Huh?’
‘King, please get down,’ Norton said from the back of the fuselage.
‘No, Norton,’ he said. ‘Get up instead.’
‘I’m not kidding!’ Mabaya screamed. ‘I’ll let go!’
‘No. You won’t.’
Silence. King let a wry smile creep across his face. He’d successfully called the bluff.
‘Like you said, this is all about money. You’re not willing to kill yourself over it. I know that. You know that.’
Mabaya still said nothing.
‘We’re going to jump out now,’ King said. ‘And there’s really nothing you can do to stop us.’
‘We’re doing what?’ Norton said, flabbergasted.
‘If you move a muscle, I let go,’ Mabaya said in a desperate attempt to remain in control of the situation.
‘I don’t think you will. Ben, jump.’
‘Wha—?’
‘We’re above the river. Jump now.’
Norton realised the urgency of what King had said. They wouldn’t be in this position for long. They had a narrow window of opportunity. He had to take it.
King watched him suck in air, working up the nerve to act. Then he leapt out the open door and disappeared from sight.
Mabaya kept his hand wrapped firmly around the grenade. Now, King knew for sure he would not let go. Hesitation had backed him into a corner. He’d psyched himself out. He wouldn’t be releasing that lever anytime soon. He let go of the controls and the Super Stallion drifted to a standstill in the air.
‘This has backfired on you, hasn’t it?’ King said, still smiling.
‘You jump into that river…’ Mabaya said, his hand shaking. ‘And I’ll just land this thing and hunt you down and beat you to death.’
‘I don’t think you’ll get the chance.’
King crossed to the open door, feeling the wind against his face. He glanced down at the flowing river beneath. There was Ben, bobbing on the surface. Alive. He stepped back inside the fuselage and wrenched something off the wall.
‘You’ll regret it if you jump,’ Mabaya snarled.
‘Doubt it.’
King unscrewed the plastic cap on the emergency flare he’d removed from the wall. He spun the cap between his fingers and struck the tip with the other end. Red sparks showered the fuselage and the flare hissed loudly, audible even over the din of the rotors. He stepped out into the open air, at the same time tossing the flare underhand into the cockpit.
CHAPTER 33
His stomach dropped as he fell. The Super Stallion shrank from sight until it was far overhead. King turned in the air and just had time to enter a pin drop position before he sliced into the murky water. The cold hit him hard. For a moment, he saw nothing but black. Then he kicked twice and surfaced.
Norton was treading water a few dozen feet away. King made eye contact with him, then looked up at the gargantuan vehicle hovering above their heads. It rested in place, not moving. A cloud of bright red smoke seeped from the open fuselage.
The whole world stood still.
‘What did you do?’ Norton said.
‘Swim,’ King said. ‘Swim right now.’
Too late.
There came a deafening bang from overhead as all the windows of the cockpit were blown out. Grenades didn’t create a fireball, contrary to popular belief. They simply caused massive instantaneous damage to anything in the general vicinity. King saw the Super Stallion quiver under the force of the detonation. Mabaya had done what King thought he would. He’d panicked, choking on flare fumes. And in the confusion he’d let go of the one thing keeping him alive.
The internal systems would be fried, demolished beyond repair. King stayed deathly still in the water. He hadn’t anticipated what would probably come next. If he was lucky, everything would be okay.
He wasn’t lucky.
The rotors slowed down, killed by the destruction of the onboard electronics.
With a groan, the Super Stallion tilted forward and fell like a boulder.
‘Down!’ King roared, his brain flooding with terror. Nothing sparked the nerves quite like an out of control fifteen-tonne steel wrecking ball.
There wasn’t enough time to clear the impact zone by moving laterally. The Super Stallion was too large, too wide. King knew their only hope of survival was putting enough water above them to slow the destroyed chopper.
Norton had reacted faster than he thought he would. The boy was already underwater. King took one last look at the Super Stallion’s nose, growing closer fast, and dove under the surface.
After the thunderous noise of the grenade blast, the silence under the river felt eerie. King twisted his body so that his head faced the river floor and kicked hard. Powerful, desperate strokes. Aiming straight down. He had roughly two or three seconds before the Super Stallion hit the water. In the muffled quiet, he heard his heart pounding in his chest, throbbing in his ears.
Was this the end?
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. He had no idea where Norton was. He could only descend. Another double-footed kick, another couple of metres toward the muddy bottom of the river.
Lungs aching.
Shoulder burning.
Head throbbing.
There was an enormous impact above, like a bass drum tearing through King’s chest. Fifteen tons of metal hitting the surface. He heard it, but saw nothing. With no knowledge of whether he had done enough to get clear, he kicked a final time and braced himself for whatever happened next.
The wreckage smashed into him with indescribable force.
For a brief moment, he thought he’d made it far enough away from the impact zone. He hadn’t. The water above him definitely slowed the chopper’s descent; otherwise, he would have been killed upon impact. The Super Stallion broke through the water just slow enough so that King felt every ounce of it crushing his back, tearing every last bubble of air from his lungs, throwing him off to the side, spinning helplessly.
It felt like he’d been hit head on by a freight train.
He came to a halt underwater moments later, every single nerve ending screaming in pain. He knew he was still conscious, and he thought he might be paralysed. He prayed he wasn’t. If his legs didn’t work he would try helplessly to reach the surface, lungs slowly failing, vision slowly dimming, until his air finally ran out and he succumbed to drowning.
He kicked, ignoring the voice in his head that told him to just give up, to stop fighting against the pain, to let death take him so he could finally be relieved of the agony that had plagued him over the last twenty-four hours. His feet responded. He wasn’t crippled. Not yet, anyway. Unaware of the extent of his injuries, he swam toward fresh air.
He broke the surface with a gasp. Beside him the Super Stallion rested vertically, its nose buried into the bottom of the river, its tail protruding from the surface. The tail rotor spun, still in the process of powering down. He saw Norton re-appear on the other side of the wreckage.
‘Did it hit you?’ King said, his voice quaking.
Norton shook his head. ‘No.’
King sighed, relief flooding his thoughts. The boy was okay. That was all that mattered. ‘Let’s get to shore.’
They swam side-by-side, paddling for the riverbank. Norton looped a hand around King’s waist, helping him along. He could tell King was seriously injured. When they crawled onto flat ground King collapsed into the mud, small waves still lapping at his torso. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the cloudless sky. By now the sun had fully risen and the jungle came alive with the sounds of wildlife. In any other scenario, it would be a pleasant setting.
‘H-how bad are you hurt?’ Norton stammered. He lay next to King, clutching his shoulder. It still ran with blood after being grazed by the bullet earlier.
‘I don’t kn
ow, kid,’ King said, his eyes closed. ‘Pretty bad.’
‘Will you make it?’
‘I hope so,’ he said. He smiled, despite everything. ‘Wouldn’t be a great story if I finally finished what I set out to do and then dropped dead.’
Norton laughed. ‘Is there more backup coming?’
‘I hope so,’ he said again.
‘Do you still have that phone you used before?’
King reached down and patted his waistband, where he’d tucked the device in earlier that morning. He found nothing.
‘It’s gone. Must have slipped out somewhere. Let’s hope whoever’s coming knows where to look.’
He opened his eyes and looked at Norton. After everything that had happened, after all the death the boy had witnessed, after all the injuries he’d sustained, he appeared to be doing okay. His expression was one of resignation. King knew he was in shock. When they were safe, the emotions would come flooding in.
For now, he would manage.
The pair lapsed into silence, watching the river flow past the demolished chopper. King dragged himself a little further up the riverbank. Pain receptors flared all over his body. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was hurt the worst. It was impossible to pinpoint. Everything ached.
‘Uh, King,’ Norton said.
King looked at him. Norton was staring somewhere behind him, at the tree line. His face had turned paler than usual. Something was wrong. Hindered by his injures, King slowly craned his neck. Following Norton’s gaze.
His heart skipped a beat.
Unarmed, unable to move, completely vulnerable, he watched as the two Phantoms who’d pursued them just minutes earlier stepped out of the jungle onto the riverbank. Both held their Kalashnikovs at shoulder height, barrels aimed directly at them.
There was no escaping this time.
CHAPTER 34
King took a deep breath. It could be the last he ever took. Beside him, Norton cried.
He saw the men pause. They observed the scene before them. The giant Super Stallion, demolished, buried in the river. The pair of helpless Americans resting on the shore. King saw something in their faces he didn’t expect to see.