Bear

by Matt Rogers

  He stormed into the new passageway and unloaded two rounds into the forehead of the second guy.

  Stepping over the corpse, he headed right. His intended destination was the wheelhouse — if he could mow through the mercenaries holding the crew hostage, he could bring them back under control. Unless the entire crew were on Magomed’s payroll, too. Which would prove difficult. King hadn’t the slightest clue how to commandeer an icebreaker of this size. If the crew had gone rogue along with the entire security force, forming a complete army of morally corrupt sociopaths, then the difficulty would amplify tenfold.

  But he didn’t have to worry about that right now.

  He just had to keep moving forward.

  He ejected the HK433’s magazine to check the number of rounds left in the clip, an automatic process ingrained into his subconscious. But it had been nearly a year since he’d seen combat. His instinctual reactions weren’t fine tuned. He was firing on all cylinders, but he didn’t have the complete situational awareness yet. That would take time to return.

  So he ended up close to another sharp corner as he ejected the magazine.

  You idiot, he thought.

  Because, as fate would have it, he’d mistimed that particular move.

  An enormous Russian brute barrelled into view, throwing all caution to the wind as he rounded the corner. His right hand clasped a massive Desert Eagle pistol, outstretched to aim ahead. His bloodshot eyes were wide and venomous, his pupils dilated, the lids swollen. A drug addict, too. He was three inches taller than King, at least, and probably outweighed him by fifty or sixty pounds. King guessed his previous occupation involved wrenching villagers from their homes and bringing them into the depths of Vadim Mikhailov’s lair.

  In the back of his mind, King gave thanks to fate for giving him the chance to finish off both murderous brothers in the space of a couple of years.

  He didn’t slow down.

  As soon as he spotted the hulking shape, his natural reflexes kicked in. He was already closing the gap at a lightning pace, reloading at a sprint, so when he recognised the brute in front of him he fired his fast twitch muscle fibres and pulled the empty HK433 up through the air, toward the ceiling. A staggering uppercut with enough adrenalin and speed behind it to generate unimaginable force. The bulk of the gun hit the underside of the big man’s wrists, breaking bone and hurling the Desert Eagle off-centre.

  The man fired.

  Horrific, deafening noise. A blinding muzzle flare. And the nauseating sensation of a bullet tearing past his head, close enough to feel the reverberation between his temples. It took everything in King not to flinch. If he flinched, it stripped valuable time away from his ability to react. Instead he accepted the fact that he was still alive to feel the consequences of the Desert Eagle going off beside his head, and he continued with his mad attack.

  The big man had missed.

  That was all that mattered.

  The uppercut with the high powered assault rifle sent the man’s hands flying skyward involuntarily, and before he could correct his aim and fire another shot King kicked him square in the gut, his combat boot akin to a steel whip as it smashed against delicate skin. The guy doubled over — again, involuntarily.

  King didn’t think twice.

  He delivered a colossal headbutt. Forehead to nose. Something cracked. He followed up with a wild manoeuvre, but figured it was suitable against a stunned adversary whilst moving at full speed. He put his left foot forward, unlocked his hips, and twisted one hundred and eighty degrees like a spring uncoiling, spinning a half revolution and building up kinetic energy at the same time. He let loose with a bent arm.

  A spinning back elbow.

  Now becoming popular in mixed martial arts due to its devastating efficiency.

  King had witnessed a knockout blow in a professional bout on a screen in Koh Tao only a couple of months ago.

  His own blow struck home.

  Bone to jaw.

  Another crack.

  The big brute collapsed against the side of the passageway, violently stripped of his consciousness.

  Flawless execution.

  The professionals would have been impressed.

  Now that he had a spare couple of seconds, he slipped a fresh magazine from his combat belt and jammed it home. He switched the select fire mode to single-fire, and put a bullet through the side of the unconscious man’s head. He figured it was a mercy killing. The guy’s brain would have never been the same, had he woken up later.

  Breath rasping in his lungs, King sensed nausea in the pit of his stomach. The reality of the situation started to sink in. He’d killed fifteen men since stepping foot aboard the Mochnost icebreaker, all combat veterans with enough talent to offer their services to the highest bidder.

  There were more. Countless more. He couldn’t comprehend the size of the mercenary force leeching through the icebreaker. Last night he’d considered sneaking away from the bunker to observe Magomed and his minions seizing the ship, so that he’d have a sense of what he was coming up against when he stormed aboard the next morning. But that would have meant leaving Slater alone and vulnerable.

  Slater was in no position to defend himself.

  That also added to the unease — all it would take was a single man to stumble across the state room and find Slater helpless on the bed. King wondered if he would have the composure to put up a fight in any capacity.

  He seriously doubted it.

  Maybe he would get a shot off. Aim the Makarov, squeeze the trigger, hope for the best. It would probably miss. King was intimately familiar with the myriad symptoms of a severe concussion — he’d experienced a couple of his own in the past on the same level as Slater’s.

  Sometimes he lay awake at night thinking of the long-term consequences of his brutal career.

  Riddled with anxiety, he pressed forward.

  Fifteen down.

  Probably double that number to go.

  Briefly, he wondered how Slater was faring trying to contact someone, anyone. It didn’t matter if they were wanted by the government. It didn’t matter that they were vigilantes. All that mattered was protecting the lives of hundreds of U.S. Navy sailors. King had no doubt Magomed would expedite the process. As soon as he met up with the convoy, he would destroy one of the warships. It wouldn’t be a difficult process — the Mochnost, with its reinforced bow designed to cut right through ice, would undoubtedly come out on top against a warship in a head-on collision. It might not split the opposing vessel in half, but it would come close.

  And that would cause untold devastation aboard.

  In the game of political warfare, two strikes was enough.

  There would be no third chance.

  There would be war.

  With the potential ramifications surging through him, King took off at a sprint down the passageway, heading directly toward the fight, going against all his human survival instincts.

  But he was slower.

  His steps were laboured.

  His breath clogged in his throat.

  With a nervous shiver, he recognised the effects of fatigue sinking in. It had been quite some time since he’d been involved in a life or death confrontation. And no matter how aggressively he pushed himself in the gym, no matter his level of physical fitness, no matter how strong his mental resilience, there was always a difference between training and the real thing.

  The real thing fired neurons and muscle fibres that King couldn’t hope to activate in simulated practice. Besides, he hadn’t been training for the real thing. He’d left the real thing in the past, detaching himself from the chaos he’d wreaked across the globe. And now it was all back, tugging at his central nervous system, wearing him down.

  Like a three hundred pound deadweight placed on his shoulders.

  He continued running, but he was moving through mud. Finally conceding defeat, he drew to a halt at another T-junction and listened hard for any signs of life. There was nothing. The rest of the mer
cenaries were above deck, coagulating around the wheelhouse and the upper levels. It would be madness up there. A war zone.

  One against thirty.

  And he didn’t think he could do it.

  Then he thought of the world that would result from his failure. He thought about surviving the forthcoming battle, stepping off the icebreaker knowing he failed, and watching the nuclear missiles fly. He thought of the hundreds of millions of innocent people who would be caught up in the coming chaos through no fault of their own.

  Maybe he was exaggerating.

  Maybe there would be no war.

  But he knew the current tensions were equal to, if not worse than, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And sending a Russian government funded icebreaker through the hull of a U.S. Navy warship only a year after a similar incident rocked diplomatic relations to their core would be unforgivable.

  So there was an overwhelming possibility.

  Find a phone, Slater, King thought.

  Find a goddamn phone.

  He forced all negative thoughts to the back of his mind, tightened his grip on the Heckler & Koch HK433, felt the cold sweat flowing freely down the back of his neck…

  …and leapt onto the nearest ladder, barreling toward the upper deck.

  56

  With great difficulty, Slater rolled onto his side and patted down the body of the man who had come within half an inch of ending his life. He saw reality through a foggy haze.

  The closest sensation he could relate it to was extreme fatigue.

  When the lactic acid built up in your limbs after a marathon, and you crossed the finish line and collapsed in a heap, barely able to find a morsel of strength to pick yourself up off the concrete.

  It was like that, multiplied by ten.

  King’s words resonated in his head. Find a phone. Contact someone. Anyone. Slater had sensed the trepidation in King’s voice, the hesitancy over getting involved with anyone in the U.S. government, especially after how they’d parted ways.

  But King didn’t know.

  Russell Williams, one of the men responsible for cleaning up the messy aftermath of Black Force’s dissolution, had been in contact twice with Slater. First in Yemen, when Slater had desperately called to warn of an impending bioterrorism attack on the streets of London. Then an in-person encounter, deep in the dark heart of Macau. Williams had informed him that the investigation had cleared both King and Slater.

  They were in the clear.

  They’d done the right thing.

  And no-one was hunting them anymore.

  But King didn’t know that. So he probably wouldn’t try to get in touch with any authorities at risk of being ignored. Instead he would focus on shutting down the threat at the source. And if that failed, then everything they’d worked toward would be useless. So it all rested squarely on Slater’s shoulders, and in his deteriorated state of consciousness he hadn’t realised the burden he was carrying until King was long gone.

  He should have said, ‘No, King, you can make the call too. They’re not looking for you anymore. They’ll believe you.’

  But he hadn’t.

  He’d simply stared and nodded with a vacant expression on his face.

  Because he couldn’t think fast. He couldn’t comprehend what was about to happen. He sensed the icebreaker surging through the Sea of Japan underneath him, and the terror caught in his throat. He knew what it symbolised.

  The beginning of the end.

  To the outside world, everything would appear to be business as usual. The politicians would be in front of the cameras, all smiles, revealing the purpose of the icebreaker’s maiden voyage and the pleasant diplomatic nature of the co-operation. The media would lap it up. The headlines would capture worldwide public attention.

  And then the icebreaker would destroy one of the warships. Magomed would sink one. Maybe two, if he had the chance. Then he would wipe all evidence of his involvement off the face of the planet with his own death. He would sink to the bottom of the ocean, forever forgotten. And the subsequent investigation would turn up sensitive information aboard, intrinsically connected to the inner workings of the Russian government, an area Magomed was intimately familiar with. Some things would be real, some forged. But no-one would be able to tell the difference.

  Christ, Slater thought. He’s thought this through.

  Maybe war wouldn’t break out immediately.

  Maybe there would be an attempt to remain civilised.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  Slater had spent far too much time dealing with the depths of human depravity.

  He knew what panicked people were capable of.

  The choices they would make.

  The decisions they would reach.

  The chaos they would cause.

  So, despite the fact that he could barely see a few feet in front of his face, he somehow overrode his body’s natural tendencies. He clawed his way through the mud of the concussion.

  He reached down, patted the dead man’s utility belt, and clenched a small rectangular object with sweaty fingers. He withdrew it from its holster, and ran his thumb over the grimy screen. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  A satellite phone.

  He dialled. Digit by painful digit. His thumb stabbed down at regular intervals, connecting a long string of numbers, forming a pattern ingrained in his head since he first accepted a position in Black Force’s ranks.

  He’d used it in Yemen.

  He would use it now.

  To explain. To justify. To urge his own government not to panic in the event of an actual collision. Because reactions would be swift, and they would be vicious. There would be no time for debate or the quagmire of public opinion. There would just be retaliation.

  Slater finished dialling, brought the phone to his ear, and closed his eyes.

  Please.

  Nothing.

  No dial tone.

  No response whatsoever from the device.

  He checked it was switched on. It was. He spotted the symbol indicating a full battery.

  Confirming his deepest fears.

  Someone was using a signal jammer to blanket the icebreaker.

  Slater realised he shouldn’t have doubted Magomed. The man had covered every possible alternative. Of course he had. It was necessary. He was leading a convoy of soulless, relentless, sociopathic ex-combatants, but that didn’t mean they unanimously wanted to encourage a third World War. Some of them might baulk in the face of such a revelation. So Magomed had to ensure no-one would speak out, no-one would recoil at the last second and make the requisite calls to the appropriate parties.

  Because this was a sensitive situation.

  If anyone discovered the true motives before it happened, it would ruin the intended effect.

  Slater bowed his head, tossed the phone away, and started to grapple with his helplessness. He wanted to do something, anything, to assist. He couldn’t imagine a world in the aftermath of global nuclear conflict.

  It scared him to his core.

  And he’d been around combat his entire life.

  Something happened. Deep inside his brain. An invisible switch, flicked in an instant. It didn’t strip him of the concussion symptoms, or the pain, or the nausea, or the heaviness in his limbs. But it cleared his mind — ever so slightly. Just enough to think straight. Just enough to hand him back control of his own body.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and planted them on the floor. Knees shaking, he stood.

  He could stand.

  That was enough.

  The pain amplified as he moved, but he could deal with pain. There was superficial agony, and then there was the brain fog that you couldn’t fight against. The fog had receded. Not all the way.

  Just enough.

  He wobbled toward the other end of the state room, heading for the doorway.

  What do you think you’re going to achieve?

  He couldn’t fight anyone. He could stumble around the passageway
s as the weak lights of the emergency system flickered on and off, sending him into an ethereal haze as he tried to navigate below deck.

  What did he hope to accomplish?

  Then everything went black. He froze in place, heart pounding in his chest, convinced his brain had given up on itself and finally succumbed to a blissful death. But all the pain remained behind, searing his temples and cramping his gut and tickling his nerve endings. So he wasn’t dead.

  Groaning. All around him. The icebreaker, still moving through the ocean.

  The lights had gone out.

  The emergency power system, failing for the first time. An untested process, never intended to be utilised on the icebreaker’s first trip. King must have destroyed the main generator at the start of the crusade. Now the backups were resting on shaky supports, trying desperately to power this behemoth of a ship as it coughed and spluttered toward the Bering Strait.

  The lights flickered back on, blinding Slater momentarily.

  Then they plunged into darkness once more.

  A strobe-like effect.

  And in the shadows, someone crept straight past the open doorway.

  Slater flinched.

  The lights came back on.

  Woozy, on wobbly legs, he stumbled out of the state room in silent pursuit.

  Because he’d recognised the faint outline of the silhouette. The stooped posture. The hair swept back. The skinny frame.

  An old man.

  57

  King stepped into the mess hall and heard voices.

  Dead ahead.

  He froze, then wedged himself into a narrow alcove in the side of the wood panelled wall.

  He’d already moved through abandoned passageways on the level above deck, staring out portholes at the churning ocean lashing against the icebreaker’s hull. The entire ship bobbed and weaved in the high seas, battling harsh weather. Storm clouds swelled on the horizon. He’d hurried forward and found the mess hall dormant, devoid of life, creaking and groaning as the icebreaker powered through the Sea of Japan. Tables were arranged in a neat grid, bolted into the floor, with room for at least a hundred patrons at once. There were no staff in the kitchen. There were no sailors aboard. Just the barebones crew, and an army of men designed to ensure everything went according to plan.