by Matt Rogers
Thorn wrenched the gun — a standard-issue Beretta M9 all too common on the mercenary scene — level and managed to squeeze off a single panicked shot as two hundred pounds of furious muscle descended on him at unbelievable speed.
He missed.
The bullet passed by King, and at that point he lost all awareness of it. It could have hit and killed Francis; it could have struck an official; it could have ricocheted into the ceiling.
King didn’t know.
He had a single target, and a single focus.
He shouldered Thorn off his feet as the audience erupted in panic. The unsuppressed gunshot, blisteringly loud in the enclosed space, caused pandemonium. People ran in all directions at once, fleeing for exits, their emotions already heightened by being in close proximity to a fist fight. Now they crushed into each other, smashing King off-balance as he came down on top of Thorn.
With the gun sandwiched between them for the briefest of moments, King used the opportunity to smash his padded glove twice into Thorn’s unprotected face. The mercenary had been relying on his weapon to get the job done — he hadn’t even considered combat. It provided King with the opening, and he capitalised on it.
Two punches was all it took.
The first smashed Thorn’s head back into the concrete floor, disorientating him but coming up short of finishing the fight. The second slammed home even harder, crushing sweat-soaked leather into the man’s open lips, rattling his skull in place and shutting the lights out.
He would be awake in seconds, semi-conscious and groggy, and that was all King needed.
He needed the man compliant.
Still sweating and panting from the exertion involved in the brief cage fight, King smashed the Beretta away, watching it skitter through the pulsating crowd and disappear from sight. Someone else could pick it up for all he cared — as long as the man underneath him was unarmed.
He looped one meaty arm around Thorn’s mid-section and lifted the unconscious man off the ground, throwing him over one shoulder in a rudimentary fireman’s carry.
Then he sprinted through the panicking masses for the nearest exit.
33
King’s world became madness.
His attention lurched in every direction at once — adjusting Thorn’s unconscious bulk on his shoulder, scanning the crowd for any signs of imminent danger, trying not to slip or stand on shattered glass underfoot. From the depths of the panicking crowd a familiar face surged forward.
The man with the clipboard who had guided them into the building just an hour earlier.
Clearly frustrated that one of his fighters had incited a riot, he hurled himself through the sweaty arena and slammed into King’s chest. Ordinarily King would have swatted the emaciated man away like a fly, but all his muscle fibres were concentrated on balancing Thorn’s enormous body on one shoulder. The man’s shoulder smacked King in the solar plexus with little force, but it did the job. He lost his equilibrium and one heel slid out across the wet concrete.
From there, gravity took hold.
The three of them collapsed amidst the panic, crushed on all sides by sprinting civilians. King landed hard on his rear, jolting him into action. He lost control of Thorn and the big mercenary — now steadily coming awake — sprawled across the ground, smashing the back of his head against the concrete and sending him straight back into unconsciousness.
The skinny guy fell straight onto King.
More frustrated than anything else, King hammered an elbow off the bridge of the guy’s nose, sending him skittering off to the side, howling with pain and clutching his damaged face.
King powered to his feet, regained control of his balance, and moved to heave Thorn off the concrete. Bodies smashed into him, threatening to separate the pair. He shouldered aside a cluster of civilians oblivious to their surroundings, rabid in their determination to escape the building, and grimaced with exertion.
It would take a significant burst of energy to follow through with this. The all-out adrenalin dump of the cage fight had taken the wind out of his sails, and now he was scrabbling for reserves. He stared down momentarily at the two-hundred pound deadweight underneath him in the form of a twice-concussed Thorn.
You don’t have a choice.
He squashed all mental protests and used a sudden burst of anger at the confusion of the situation to heave Thorn over one shoulder. The crowd had formed a loose form of cohesiveness by now, moving as a long, rabid stream flowing to each of the various exits.
All-out panic had been avoided.
King kept his head low and ran with everything he had left in the tank, following the masses. He needn’t have bothered trying to conceal himself — he was obvious enough to spot, but the vast majority of the crowd weren’t concerned with one of the fighters being in their midst.
The primal parts of their brains were supercharging them with nerves after the close-quarters gunshot.
They left the vastness of the arena behind and hurried through corridors with low ceilings and white walls, none of them sporting any kind of distinguishable features. King knew where he was headed, but the timing might prove difficult.
Brody was nowhere to be seen.
The muscles in his upper legs screamed in protest. Lactic acid burned in his quadriceps and hamstrings. A few civilians on either side of him threw odd glances at the bulky man draped over King’s shoulder, but most were fixated on the path ahead. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that someone had fainted in the panic.
Almost everyone considered him a Good Samaritan, and continued on their way.
When they made it to one of the front entrances King joined a steady flood of people moving out through the open double doors. The pace ramped up, with most of the surrounding civilians desperate to be free from the fear hanging in the arena. King might have shared similar emotions if he didn’t know the man who caused the commotion was draped over his shoulder, concussed twice in the space of a minute. Thorn would be awake in a few seconds, but his brain wouldn’t be functioning properly for quite some time.
As if on cue, the man uttered a groan as King burst out into the night, flashing his gaze each way down the street, searching for…
A familiar open-topped jeep screamed into the street, twisting out of an adjacent alleyway as if it had been waiting for the moment to pounce. King stuck his free hand as high in the air as possible — at six foot three he towered over most of the crowd, but he didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
Brody spotted him immediately and lurched to a halt alongside him.
Surrounded by the masses, King shoved a couple of people aside and dumped Thorn’s semi-conscious bulk across the rear seats, hurling him over the door frame. The mercenary hit the leather and lay still, not in the state to mount any kind of resistance.
‘In,’ Brody commanded. ‘Can’t believe I’m fucking doing this…’
King said nothing, hurrying around to the passenger’s side of the vehicle. His bare feet kicked up mud as he ran — he hadn’t even had time to put a shirt on. Still sweating freely, he reached for the handle.
‘Jason King!’ a voice shouted, more in an attempt to identify him than anything else.
He didn’t recognise it.
He wheeled on the spot, searching the crowd for the source. What surprised him the most was the American accent. The only Americans he imagined populating these parts at the present moment were Brody, and…
Oh, he realised.
He had never met the man standing on the other side of the street before, or even seen a single photo of him, but instantly he knew who he was. The coincidence was too great for the man to be an old military acquaintance — the worst case scenario was about to unfold. The guy was in his early fifties, built like a tractor with a rigid jawline and a stern, unwavering demeanour. He stood bolt upright, clinically assessing the mad outbreak of terrified civilians.
‘You Rex Bernardi?’ King said.
‘What the hell is goi
ng on?’
‘You shouldn’t have come in the first place.’
‘What are you doing?’
King froze, grinding his teeth together in frustration. Behind him he sensed Brody notice the altercation and make a grunt of concern.
‘Rex?’ Brody called. ‘That you?’
‘What on earth have you boys got yourself into?’
‘Get in the car,’ King said.
He heard the sharp intake of air as Brody processed what King had said.
‘No,’ Brody muttered.
King twisted on the spot. ‘You got a better idea?’
‘Not right now. We need to go.’
‘We need to take him with us. What other choice have we got?’
‘What are you two saying?’ Bernardi called across the street. ‘Explain yourselves. Right now.’
King turned back. ‘Rex, get in the car.’
‘Not a chance in hell.’
‘Rex…’
‘I want to know exactly what you’re both doing there. Who’s that?’
He gestured to the back seat, where Thorn was still unconscious. The second crack to the head had put him out for a significant portion of time. Despite everything, King hoped the man would be okay.
He hoped nothing permanent would come from any of this.
‘I couldn’t explain it to you,’ King said. ‘Even if I wanted to. A lot of shit’s happened. We were still planning to meet you tomorrow.’
‘Doesn’t look like that’s happening,’ Bernardi said. ‘You going to be a wanted man a couple of hours from now?’
‘Why did you come?’ King said.
‘Because I wanted to meet you. Wasn’t that obvious?’
‘You could have waited…’
‘You sound a lot like your handler,’ Bernardi said. ‘You never taken things into your own hands, kid? You always follow procedure?’
‘You know that’s the last thing I do,’ King said. ‘If you’ve read my file.’
‘Then you know why I’m here.’
‘And I’m telling you to get in the car.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘King…’ Brody said.
Bernardi said, ‘Answer me.’
‘Back to the Rwandan border,’ King said. ‘Back to the compound.’
‘King!’ Brody said, a little louder.
King didn’t move. ‘I’m serious. Get in the car. We can talk. I know you came all this way just to see me and I don’t want to—’
‘We’re leaving!’ Brody roared, his voice in much closer proximity than King expected.
Before King could even turn around, a hand clamped down on his shoulder and yanked him back into the passenger seat. He sprawled across the leather, falling into the car in ungainly fashion. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Brody leap back across the centre console and land in the driver’s seat, crushing his foot to the accelerator as soon as his butt touched the seat.
‘Wait…’ King said, but the sharp crack of automatic gunfire drowned out the rest of his sentence.
He ducked, throwing himself under the line of sight and closing the door behind him as the jeep’s tyres squealed in the mud and the entire vehicle pounced into action. Brody swerved the wheel, narrowly avoiding a cluster of fleeing civilians directly in front of them.
More gunfire roared in the distance, and the frame of the jeep rattled as it absorbed bullets. King ducked into the passenger footwell and snatched hold of his MEU pistol, twisting in his seat to return fire. He minimised his target area by pressing himself into the back of the seat, but it only took him a half-second of analysis to realise returning fire wasn’t feasible.
There were too many variables, and too many sprinting civilians in complete panic mode.
It wasn’t hard to spot the culprits. They moved with the grace of trained combatants, the pair of them ghosting across the muddy track in the lowlight, their rifles blazing as they fired on King’s vehicle.
Wyatt, and his buddy Link.
The conditions were less than ideal, but King thought he could make out the venom in Wyatt’s eyes. They had crossed a line with their decision, and now the consequences were all too real. These highly trained and heavily armed soldiers of fortune would track them down mercilessly until they got their man back.
Both Brody and King were aware of that.
They had taken it in stride, opting to take advantage regardless.
But what came next King did not anticipate.
‘Shit,’ he said, as he watched Wyatt lower his weapon and glance sideways. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Brody, turn around.’
‘I can’t. We don’t have automatic weapons. We’ll die.’
‘Goddamnit.’
It happened blindingly fast. Wyatt must have spotted King talking to Rex Bernardi, who hadn’t moved from his general position. The man should have taken the opportunity to run, to flee into the hills as gunfire erupted, but military training must have kicked in and he’d opted to take cover behind a nearby fruit stall, its owners long gone as they ran from the carnage.
Wyatt stormed across the street, his silhouette growing ever-smaller as Brody tore away from the mixed martial arts arena. King couldn’t make out much of what came next, but he saw enough to get the general idea. Wyatt rounded the fruit stall and smashed the butt of his rifle into Rex Bernardi’s forehead before the man had the slightest opportunity to retaliate. Bernardi slumped into the dirt, and Wyatt reached down to seize hold of his unconscious form.
Then Brody twisted the jeep sharply to the right, guiding them around the bend in the track, and the scene disappeared from sight.
‘Wyatt got Bernardi,’ King said, dejected.
He knew the ramifications would be dire, but in such a heightened mental state he couldn’t quite grasp the extent of them.
‘Fuck,’ Brody said, bowing his head. ‘We never should have done this. What did I think was going to happen?’
‘We’re impulsive,’ King said. ‘Lars should have had us supervised. We got so far in our careers by being reckless, and it ruined us this time.’
‘This is bad. Very, very bad.’
‘He shouldn’t have been there,’ King said, then smashed a fist into the dashboard to alleviate a sudden rush of anger. ‘Jesus Christ. If he hadn’t been there this would have worked out.’
‘We made our decision. Shit was going to hit the fan regardless.’
‘This is worse. This is so much worse. I might get discharged from the military for this. All I had to do was meet an official and exchange pleasantries, and I just got him abducted.’
‘This is black operations, King. You don’t get discharged. You disappear.’
The meagre streetlights of Kisangani fell away and darkness wrapped around the jeep, draping King in a blanket of conflicting emotions as Brody set off along a pitch-dark dirt track.
Heading back for the compound.
Heading into the unknown.
34
They had been driving for close to two hours before King summed up the courage to voice what was on his mind.
As soon as they’d passed out of Kisangani’s outer limits and dipped back into the desolate countryside of rural Congo, Brody had let King take the wheel and set to work securing Thorn with lengths of rope he’d purchased from a street vendor on his way out of the complex. From there it had been a quick trip back to the jeep, which he’d left in the shadows of an alleyway alongside their dingy apartment, and then a couple of minutes of painful waiting time until the doors burst open and the crowd flooded out in a mass panic.
‘What if I lost the fight?’ King said, breaking the type of silence that had become somewhat oppressive.
As the quiet had dragged on, and the sounds of the Congolese night had enveloped them, it felt like the first person to speak up would be somehow cursed, ruining a dark and moody pause they both considered well needed.
Now, Brody took his time to respond. He rolled the thought over in his mind, and King didn’t wait f
or a reply. He stared out at the sweeping dark plains, barely able to see the land a dozen feet on either side of the speeding jeep. At this pace, they would be back at the compound by morning.
And then what? King thought.
‘That was the least of my concerns,’ Brody said.
‘Why’d you decide to go through with it? After all this time? After all our talk?’
Brody stole a glance over his shoulder, where Thorn lay groggily outstretched across the rear seats. He’d returned to consciousness within minutes of their journey beginning, but the binding rope across his wrists and ankles and torso prevented him from budging an inch. Escape was out of the question entirely. King had watched Brody slave away at the restraints, wondering in the back of his mind just how much experience the man had tying up hostages.
He was damn good at it.
‘I need to know,’ Brody said. ‘I thought I didn’t. I tried to put on a brave face. I know that goes against everything I’ve just told you, but…’
‘I get it,’ King said. ‘You can be rigid and disciplined in the military but that doesn’t carry over. Doesn’t matter how tough you are. Emotions are fucked.’
‘You got much experience in that department?’
‘Not yet. Too young. But my insides turn to shit every time I step into a live situation, so that’s something I need to deal with.’
Brody managed a glance across. ‘But you still do it anyway?’
‘Always have. Always will.’
Brody sighed. ‘I couldn’t see a way out. I knew Wyatt and his men had ties to the scene — I knew I might pick up a clue while I was there. I was never expecting to be confronted. It set something off in my chest … I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.’
‘I felt it,’ King said. ‘In the air.’
‘I’d spent so long avoiding them, ever since that day two years ago. I knew what would happen if I ran straight into them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself. And now I need to know who shot up that village. Maybe that’ll put my mind at rest.’