by Matt Rogers
He’d shrugged the MP5 off his back, taken aim down the sights, and touched a finger to the trigger when Violetta’s muffled, ‘No!’ drifted through the silence between bursts of gunfire.
He’d refrained.
She clearly had a better plan.
Then he’d remembered how close the shooter’s bullets had come to shredding Alexis.
He saw red, and crept along the creaking awning toward the window frame.
Six feet from the sill he looked out and made eye contact with King above the hood of the SUV.
He nodded, quiet and slow.
King disappeared back behind cover.
A gun barrel protruded from the window, so close he could almost reach out and touch it. He heard the laboured breathing of the shooter, the flood of adrenaline coaxing him onward. He pumped more rounds at the car.
Slater inched closer.
Saw a gritty face with clenched teeth, wet with perspiration. He was small and thin but he fired the weapon with practiced expertise.
Bad luck, Slater thought.
He swung into view like an oversized bat and seized hold of the gun barrel. It was scorching hot, but the combat glove prevented any burns. Slater wrenched the rifle out of the shooter’s hands like plucking a toy off a disobedient child and hurled it down into no-man’s-land. The guy made to spill away from the window, back into the safety of the darkened room, but Slater seized him by the collar.
Dragged him forward, smashed his face into the wooden sill.
The guy bounced up off the window frame with a freshly broken nose and a freshly bruised jaw.
Slater brought his face down three more times into the sill — bang-bang-bang — and then heaved his unconscious body out through the opening.
The guy sailed down fifteen feet and hit the dirt on his back, bouncing his skull off the ground.
It brought him back to consciousness.
Maybe only temporarily, because there was no way he didn’t have significant brain damage, but that didn’t matter.
Because King vaulted back over the hood of the SUV and shot the guy twice in the chest.
Slater made a mistake.
He watched it happen instead of covering his six.
Sudden rapid movement in the room he’d dragged the shooter from. Slater sidestepped out of view but a bullet came ripping out through the open window all the same. It came devilishly close — it didn’t hit, but it spooked him. He had his MP5 in hand before anyone could blink, but he wasn’t paying attention to his footing. Still on a partial retreat, he put his foot down and found thin air.
He only managed to think, Fuck, before he slipped off the awning.
It wouldn’t have been an issue if he didn’t have the sub-machine gun in hand.
One part of his brain said, Drop the gun. Land safe.
Another part said, Keep it. Risk it.
He couldn’t decide.
Time passes fast.
He hit the dirt on his back, keeping the MP5 in his grip, aiming it up at the awning he’d fallen from. He knew the second shooter would lunge out into open view for a chance of finishing off his prey. He couldn’t risk not being able to return fire…
But he snapped his ankle.
Pain shot up his leg like a rocket igniting at launch. He tuned it out, completely ignored it. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t there. The second shooter stuck his head out the window, just as Slater had predicted.
Slater blew his face apart before the guy could shoot down at him.
The second shooter slumped over the sill and momentum carried him forward and he spilled out onto the awning. Lay there with one hand draped over the lip, dangling in open space.
Lay still.
Slater was still ignoring his ankle. He rolled and got to his feet and his whole leg gave out. He tumbled back into a seated position, sweat beading on his brow, teeth clenched in frustration.
King was there by his side in seconds.
King offered a hand. ‘Get up.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What is it?’
Slater pointed to his ankle.
King said, ‘You can get up.’
Reached down and got his hands under Slater’s armpits and hauled the man upright. Slater balanced on one leg, trying not to look at his bad ankle. He was gravely compromised. But he could hop. He jumped and bounced and jolted his way over to the warehouse’s entrance door, then slumped to the side of it, his back to the wall. At least the awning now separated him from any shooters sweeping their barrels over no-man’s-land.
King said, ‘Body count?’
‘I killed three out back. Two in that window.’
‘So there’s one more?’
‘There’s no guarantee Ray didn’t summon more. And he had a guy in the lot behind this one. There could be more in the surrounding properties.’
Before they could formulate the beginnings of a plan Violetta was racing past them.
King stopped her with a hand on her stomach. ‘What are you doing?’
She jabbed a finger down at Slater. ‘He’s compromised. Can’t shoot it out with reinforcements by sitting on his ass. You stand guard. I’ll get Alexis.’
King said, ‘I’ll do it.’
‘It’s tight corners in there. And lots of shadow. I’m small. You’re big.’
King knew he couldn’t waste time thinking about it any longer.
And he trusted her completely.
He said, ‘Go.’
She ran in through the open door, her own SIG up, and disappeared into the bowels.
King adopted a defensive position, dropping down on one knee, and swept his gun over the darkness all around them.
Waiting for more of the late Keith Ray’s henchmen to bleed from the night like the ghouls they were.
56
All the lights were off.
Violetta swore under her breath.
She crept across the cavernous space in a crouch-walk, slipping past dormant machinery, navigating around abandoned forklifts. She passed a cluster of tables arranged in the centre of the warehouse floor, their surfaces covered in laptops and computer towers. A makeshift command centre, identical to what she’d put together after going incommunicado from the government. This was Ray, packing up and fleeing his old HQ, probably paranoid of Gates getting desperate and going to the police or the media with a tell-all confession. A couple of the laptop screens were still open, softly pouring pixellated white light across the tables. Violetta crouched by one and scanned the screen.
It was a live feed of Wan’s back alley.
She almost jolted with surprise.
So Ray had eyes on Gates. It would have spelled the end of the war if the war hadn’t abruptly ended here. Out of curiosity Violetta touched a finger to the track-pad and scrolled to activate the rewind function. The time accelerated in reverse and she watched close to an hour go by in a handful of seconds. Then a brief flash of movement by the back door, then back to nothing.
Violetta paused. Fast-forwarded a couple of minutes. Played at 1x speed.
The back door opened at 8:03p.m.
Melanie Kerr stormed out.
Gates appeared behind her, filling the doorway — all spindly limbs and shadowy menace.
She paused on the bottom step and turned back to face him. Like the furious exit had been an act all along. She eyed him. He said something to her. She nodded, walked back up the stairs, and went back inside. Gates closed the door behind her.
All was forgiven.
Violetta memorised the scene.
Then closed the laptop and moved on.
She was at the back wall in seconds. There wasn’t a peep from the rest of the warehouse. A house-sized partition wall led to a separate corridor, plain and unfurnished and unadorned with decorations. Weak light came from a door at the end — she likened it to the glow of a desk lamp. She kept the SIG trained on the light the whole way down the hall, then turned into an office with a desk and a chair and a blinking security cam
era in the upper corner—
Hands grabbed her wrists. Someone lunging at her from the side.
The hands were a similar size to hers.
She and Alexis recognised each other in unison.
Alexis let go immediately, and Violetta brought a finger to her lips. They froze in place, listening intently. They heard nothing.
Then footsteps.
Outside.
In the hallway.
Loud.
Coming right at them.
Violetta had enough competency to recognise that Ward’s estimate of six men remaining with Ray was just that — an estimate. There could be more than one. So although every part of her wanted to step outside and put an unsuppressed round into the guy’s face, she refrained. She had surprise on her side, and that was it. Not size, not strength.
Didn’t matter.
She lunged out of the office and pistol-whipped the guy in the face with the butt of her SIG. As suspected, he was bigger, and he was stronger. But the simple laws of physics broke his nose all the same. He lunged, too, swinging his own pistol around in an attempt to aim and shoot, but he was already blinded by watery eyes and an aching septum. Violetta didn’t help when she smashed the butt against the same broken nose, further injuring it, grinding the bones together. He went down on one knee and she got her hand on his wrist and torqued it and his weapon fell free without a single shot being fired.
She smacked him once, twice, three times in the face with the SIG.
Each blow dealt horrific damage.
Violetta didn’t look away.
She didn’t dare pretend there weren’t consequences to this mad game.
He started to collapse and she caught him around the throat — just as she’d been taught over thousands of hours of jiu-jitsu classes — and squeezed methodically and surgically. It didn’t take obscene strength. It didn’t even take a whole lot of dexterity and coordination. All she had to do was lock her forearm against his neck at the right angle, then apply as much pressure as she could. He was blind from watery eyes and a swollen nose and a split lip, so he was forced to rely on guesswork when he retaliated. He threw her around with his sheer deadweight but she held onto his back, “sinking the hooks in” by wrapping her legs around his mid-section. He tried to slam her into the wall but his legs faltered before he could make it laterally across the hallway.
He dropped to his knees, reached up and feebly grabbed at her forearm.
It didn’t work.
He went out, fell forward, splayed across the dusty concrete.
Blood coagulated with dirt.
Brown muck surrounded his face.
She kept squeezing.
Waited a full thirty seconds past the point of unconsciousness before she let go and crawled off him.
For good measure she fished across his throat for a pulse.
Didn’t find one.
She stood up to find Alexis staring at her in horror.
Violetta dusted blood and dirt off her outfit. Her chest rose and fell, her arms heavy with lactic acid buildup. Killing a larger man with her bare hands took every ounce of effort she had to give.
‘This is what we do,’ she said.
Alexis kept staring.
Violetta said, ‘You still in?’
Alexis said, ‘I’m in.’
Violetta offered a hand and led her out of the corridor. They passed under another security camera — a reflective black half-sphere positioned above one of the doorways. It would have captured everything Violetta had done, but there was no blinking light beside it.
Only certain cameras were functioning.
Violetta raised her SIG, re-swept the space, and completed the extraction three minutes after stepping inside.
57
Ward said six.
Slater had killed five.
No one else appeared. The seconds drew out, painfully slow, but King never lowered his guard for a heartbeat. The darkness started warping, imaginary shadows rearing up over Ray’s body. The sheriff’s operation was now moribund, but there was a very real possibility of hangers-on. Last-minute call-ups, ushered in by Ray as soon as he realised the four men he’d sent to pursue Ward weren’t coming back.
Or he’d been cocky, and thought he could pull it off with his original cadre.
Which ended up being the case.
Violetta and Alexis appeared beside them. It couldn’t have been more than minutes, but it felt like years.
Violetta said, ‘That’s it. It’s clear.’
Still seated, Slater muttered, ‘Any reinforcements would have been even dumber than these guys. There’s no way they’re out there showing restraint. We’re clear.’
Alexis walked over to him, crouched by him, and threw her arms around him.
He held her tight.
Breathed her scent.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Ray’s body over her shoulder, spread-eagled in the dirt.
Slater said, ‘Did he—?’
Alexis shook her head, her eyes wet. ‘He tried.’
‘What happened?’
‘You called. It stopped him.’
Slater regarded the corpse in the lot with fury. He should have died slower. A bullet was merciful. Ray stared up at the stars, eyes wide, lips full, face pale.
Pathetic in death.
Pathetic in life.
King cast Slater a dark look over how narrowly Alexis had avoided the horrors. ‘Skin of our teeth.’
Alexis said, ‘I’m not ready for this, Will. I wasn’t—’
He said, ‘Not now. Please. I can’t think straight.’
Violetta looked at his ankle. ‘How bad is it?’
King said, ‘Bad.’
‘We need Josefine’s daughter,’ Violetta said. ‘We need Elsa. That’s priority number one. To do that we need Kerr back.’
So much had happened that Kerr had slipped from Slater’s mind. He stared into the night. ‘Go get her.’
King shook his head. ‘It’s been too long. She could be anywhere. Laying low in any of these buildings. She’s a needle in a haystack now.’
‘If we work together,’ Slater said, ‘we can…’
‘You can’t walk,’ King said.
For the first time Slater noticed the expression on Violetta’s face. She was remembering … something.
Slater looked at her. ‘What is it?’
Violetta said, ‘I know what to do.’
King said, ‘You do?’
She looked at him. ‘Take Slater and Alexis back home.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Pay a visit to Wan’s.’
King froze. Again, wanting to volunteer for the dirty work. ‘Let me.’
Violetta shook her head. ‘He has the place rigged with cameras. You ghosted him earlier today. You’re at the top of his shit list. He has no idea who I am.’
King mulled it over, then shook his head again. ‘Killing Gates right now achieves nothing. We need to be focused on Kerr.’
‘I am focused on Kerr,’ Violetta said.
There’s something you don’t know.
King said, ‘What?’
‘I saw surveillance footage on a laptop in there,’ she said, jerking a thumb at the dark maw of the entrance. ‘Of the alley behind Wan’s. Gates and Ray were in a war, after all. They were keeping tabs on each other.’
‘Okay?’
‘As of an hour ago, Melanie was there.’
King stared. ‘Oh.’
Alexis said, ‘Are we stooping that low?’
Slater gave her a look. It said plenty.
It said, There’s a woman serving eleven years for something she didn’t do. There’s a girl — a kid, really — locked up in some hole where Gloria Kerr stores any product that has too much heat on it. That’s if Elsa isn’t already dead. And there’s a larger web. There’s someone even higher than the DA who’s in on this, who’ll get off scot-free unless we act now.
Yes, Alexis, we’re stooping low.
>
Not that it was in any way guaranteed.
King said, ‘Gates knows me, but he’s still compromised. I doubt he has anyone left. That’s the snowball effect. A few of his boys die, a couple more run, and suddenly everyone’s hightailing it for the hills or switching sides. Criminals don’t exactly inspire life-or-death loyalty.’
Violetta looked out over the grounds, at the bodies scattered across no-man’s-land or draped over the lip of the awning. ‘Ray did.’
‘Gates isn’t Ray. He’s a street thug. Ray was a manipulator of the highest calibre.’
Violetta said, ‘Even so, I can handle it. He doesn’t know me. I’ve got a better chance of tying it up neatly.’
Chance.
The word hung heavy in the air.
Slater could see the ethical dilemma playing out before his eyes.
King had just seen what happened with Alexis. How close Slater had come to the love of his life getting killed or permanently scarred by trauma. Violetta had a hundred times the field experience that Alexis did, and was equally as capable of putting a bullet square between Gates’ eyes as King was, but still…
King had been operating solo for most of his career.
His instinct was to place all the risk squarely on his own shoulders.
Bear the burden, so others didn’t have to.
He was grappling with it now.
Slater said, ‘Jason.’
King looked over.
Slater said, ‘It’s not your call. It’s hers.’
King nodded.
He knew.
He just didn’t want to admit it.
Violetta said, ‘I’ve got spare clothes in the back of the Range Rover. I’ll take it to Wan’s. Can you steal one of their cars and hole it up in the garage back at the estate?’
King nodded. ‘No problem.’
She could tell he wasn’t happy.
They all could.
She said, ‘I’m not your handler anymore. I’m just as much of a field agent as you now. And in this case it’s safer for me to do this.’