by Matt Rogers
The left-side mirror exploded in a shower of sparks as King scraped the car against one of the brick walls. He seized a tighter hold on the wheel and focused as hard as he could on the path ahead.
It was going to be tight.
At the end of the alley, he spotted Ramos’ hatchback screaming past. Satisfied that he’d made the right call, he burst through the gap ahead at fifty miles per hour. He clenched his teeth, praying that a pedestrian didn’t decide to cross the road as he roared into the next street.
It would be a grisly result, no doubt.
Thankfully, the streets were relatively empty — King wondered how much that had to do with the brutal drug war currently gripping Tijuana.
A war that he was currently contributing to, unless he eliminated Ramos before the day drew to a close.
They left the grid of residential buildings behind, and the land began to incline. King noticed the mountains drawing closer and closer with each passing second. The road they were currently travelling along grew narrower up ahead, twisting and curving as it rose into the hills. He made out the steep hillsides dropping away from the edges of the road and fought down hesitation.
He wasn’t the most skilled driver in the world, preferring to utilise sheer speed and recklessness instead of any kind of precision. Deep down, he knew that if the pursuit reached the dangerous off-road trails of the mountains, he would be at a significant disadvantage.
And — worse than that — one wrong move would spell disaster.
He started to doubt his ability to succeed.
Then he shoved all negative thoughts to the back of his mind and accelerated faster.
He remembered the way the elderly woman’s body had crumpled in the street just moments previously.
If he didn’t do something to make things right, he would never be able to forgive himself.
The hatchback peeled away, as if Ramos could sense his hesitation. They rose further and further above sea level, battling the steep mountain roads. Ramos swerved around slower traffic, and King followed suit. He kept up with the hatchback’s lightning-fast pace, regaining confidence with each passing second.
A minute later, they entered a flat stretch of road running along the side of the mountain. To King’s right, the land sloped sharply up to the peak. To his left, a long length of thin metal railing separated his vehicle from a vicious fall down a gravel hillside.
There was no traffic ahead.
This was his opportunity.
King gave the Chevy’s engine all it had, pushing the car faster. His surroundings on either side began to blur as the speedometer reached close to its maximum speed.
The hatchback ahead couldn’t match the pace, its engine a tad less powerful. King watched as its rear bumper edged closer and closer to the hood of his Chevy. He gripped the wheel tight, knuckles white, brow furrowed. He would only have one chance to ram Ramos’ car off the road, and he would take full advantage of it.
Then the world went mad.
Several things happened at once.
First, Ramos slammed on the brakes up ahead. King noticed the red lights on the back of the hatchback flaring, and he lunged for his own brake pedal to avoid a collision.
Briefly, he wondered why the hell Ramos had decided to cut the chase off so abruptly. If they both screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, King would have ample opportunity to disable the hatchback’s tyres with his Five-seven.
He paused, sizing things up.
Then, a behemoth of a vehicle came steaming into view from an alcove to the right. King hadn’t even seen the groove in the mountainside where the enormous tank-on-wheels had been parked. His eyes widened in surprise and he snatched at the wheel…
…but it was too little, too late.
With a churning stomach, he realised that Ramos hadn’t led King into the mountains for no good reason.
He had brought him here deliberately.
He’d slammed on the brakes to manoeuvre him into position.
King braced for impact.
There was nothing else he could do.
The collision almost tore the Chevy in half, gouging a massive dent into the entire right-hand-side of the vehicle. Unrelenting sound flooded his senses — the screaming of twisting metal, the screeching of his tyres on the asphalt as the Chevy was thrust to the left.
Then — most shocking of all — the unmistakeable whine of twisting metal as his vehicle tore through the thin railing to the left and dipped off the edge of the hillside.
The truck had near-demolished his car, forcing it off the road without much effort. King’s view outside blurred, and before he knew it he realised that the Chevy was starting to rotate…
‘Shit,’ he muttered, barely audible amidst the carnage.
He clicked his seatbelt into position and held on for dear life as the sedan entered an uncontrollable barrel roll.
20
The momentum of the fall whisked shards of glass around the interior of the cabin as all the windows shattered simultaneously.
King closed his eyes to prevent the fragments from slicing them to pieces. He rode through each impact as the Chevy smashed its roof against the ground, then its side, then its undercarriage. The relentless barrage continued for what felt like an hour, but in reality couldn’t have been much more than fifteen seconds.
When it finally came to a jarring halt, the sudden change of momentum slammed King against his seat back hard enough to stun him into a lucid state. He sat motionless in the driver’s seat, with shock setting into his psyche.
He assessed his injuries. The glass had cut deep lines across his face, wounds that were already starting to leak crimson. He wiped a hand across one cheek and winced as it came away almost entirely red. His foot had been bent to an awkward angle by the crazed vertigo of the barrel roll. Already, it throbbed badly. His sternum ached from the beating it had taken, slammed back and forth between the seatbelt and the seat in jarring fashion.
Otherwise, he seemed okay. Superficial wounds, wounds that would ordinarily land him in hospital if he lived any semblance of a normal life.
In the world he currently operated in, he considered himself unscathed.
A dull ache sprouted to life behind his eyeballs. He grimaced as he considered the ramifications if he ended up with a serious concussion. It would impede everything he did from this point on. He would have to take it one step at a time, and hope that everything remained functioning upstairs.
He still had a job to do.
He stared around at the destroyed wreck of a vehicle that he sat within and shook his head in disbelief. It was hard to comprehend how he had survived. The metal chassis was twisted and crumpled beyond any hope of repair.
King let the uncanny quiet settle over the wreckage before he leant forward and rummaged through the footwell, already littered with broken glass. He fetched the Five-seven pistol out of the mess and checked that its magazine was still slotted into the bottom of the grip.
Satisfied, he shifted position until his feet faced the driver’s door. Then he kicked out, hard, sending the mangled door swinging outward. It was the only way to open it after the beating it had endured.
He stepped out into the rocky valley, devoid of all vegetation and completely exposed to the dry air. He kept low, skirting around the edge of the wreckage just in case any of Ramos’ thugs felt the need to fire on his location. His head swam and his eyes watered. Briefly, he paused and rested a hand against the side of the crumpled Chevy, steadying himself.
He tried to deny the fact that he was in a bad state, but after pausing to consider his pounding headache, he had to accept that he needed time to recover.
There was no time, though…
He heard the roar of a modified engine and peered up the hillside that he had just violently descended. His heart leapt in his chest as he spotted the gargantuan vehicle that had rammed him off the road. The truck drove through the portion of railing he had torn off and mounted the off-road s
urface with ease, surging down the mountain toward him.
They were coming to finish him off…
Now that he had a few seconds to comprehend what lay in front of him, he got a better look at the vehicle that had almost killed him. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
It was a highly-modified dump truck, more than likely used in a past life for collecting trash around the suburbs of Tijuana. At some point, it had been purchased by Ramos’ cartel and converted into an armoured monstrosity.
King stared at the steel shell covering the dump truck, made of thick plates. Its wheels had been upgraded to handle the additional weight, replaced by massive off-road tyres that churned up the gravel as it descended the hillside towards him.
Small portions of the steel had been removed to allow for firing ports, which lined the side of the dump truck. They provided room for assault rifles and other weaponry to be poked out of the sides. King imagined that was how they intended to finish him off. He wondered just how the monstrous vehicle was able to travel through the streets of Tijuana without drawing the attention of the police.
Then he realised that this was Mexico.
Anyone could be bought and paid off.
He guessed that was how they were allowed to operate such an obvious tank-on-wheels without interference.
Or it was a new invention, only recently being put to the test.
Whatever the case, it was descending into the valley at a blistering speed.
King stayed out of sight, thinking hard. He didn’t know if the occupants of the monster truck had spotted him leaving the wreckage. If they hadn’t, he still had the element of surprise on his side. Maybe they thought there was no chance of the barrel roll being survivable, but they had been instructed by Ramos to head down and confirm his demise in person.
Just to make sure.
If that was the case, they wouldn’t expect a firefight.
King pressed his forehead to the twisted metal door of the Chevy, breathing deep. He forced his shaking hands to calm, letting a portion of the adrenalin dissipate. He knew the benefits of the rush of neurochemicals, but the amount of cortisol flooding his system in the aftermath of the deadly tumble had reached disadvantageous heights. He couldn’t aim a firearm effectively with this much energy in his system. He calmed himself, then crouched low, planning a strategy of attack.
The options were grim. He was clearly outgunned and outnumbered, up against a Mad Max-esque contraption with a possible concussion and a single semi-automatic pistol in his arsenal.
He’d make it work.
Or die trying.
He peeked around the corner of the destroyed Chevy and soaked in the finer details of the approaching tank — namely, the steel plates covering the windshield to prevent anyone from taking out the driver or passenger. Nevertheless, those two occupants still had to see what lay in front of them, which meant that twin identical portholes had been removed from the steel plates in much the same style as the firing slots running along the side of the chassis.
That gave him a chance.
King opted to act instead of spending too much time stressing over the details. Improvisation was a tool that hadn’t let him down in the past. He narrowed in, using the same tunnel vision…
…and stepped out from behind the wreckage.
He was in clear view of the armoured truck. It corrected course slightly as it noticed him stumble into open ground. He played up the extent of his injuries, acting semi-conscious when in reality his senses were recovering as each second went by.
As a result, the driver underestimated him. Instead of safely pulling to a halt and gunning King down from a distance, the truck picked up speed, opting to try and mow him down where he stood, crushing him into paste.
As it grew closer, King lifted the Five-seven pistol into view and narrowed his gaze, utilising the thousands of hours of firing practice he’d put into military ranges all across the United States.
The Five-seven felt like an extension of his own arm.
He methodically lined up the sights and pumped the trigger over and over again, nailing a target area without any room for error whatsoever.
The sheet of glass across the porthole shattered, the bullets tearing it apart. King shook his head at the cartel’s foolishness. They had coated every shred of the dump truck’s exterior in thick steel plates for added protection, but had failed to make the small porthole windows bulletproof in the process.
A glaring weakness, which King had just exploited to maximum effect.
The monster truck veered wildly as the driver slumped across the steering wheel. King had fired eight shots, plus the three shots back at the apartment complex, which left nine rounds if the Five-seven was fitted with a standard-issue magazine. Only one of them needed to land home, but it seemed that multiple had.
The truck drifted off-course, eliminating the potential for a direct impact on King. Even if it had continued straight forward, he would have dived out of the way. He watched it roar past — the driver must have jerked involuntarily against the accelerator in his death throes. It threw the gunners off their game plan, because no follow-up shots came King’s way. The firing slots remained empty.
King ducked low, ready to try and avoid any oncoming fire. When none came his way, he took off at a sprint across the uneven ground, falling into step behind the out-of-control dump truck. He imagined the passenger wrestling for control of the wheel, searching desperately for the brakes.
His suspicions were confirmed.
The brake lights flared and the truck began to slow at the lowest point of the valley. Its fat wheels rumbled against the ground.
King didn’t slow down for a second.
He charged at the massive vehicle, gaining ground until its steel hull dwarfed him completely.
Operating on instinct alone.
21
Despite his relative inexperience in the field, the following situation suddenly seemed all too familiar to King. He had the opportunity to concentrate on his reflexes, recognising what he would need and what he could discard.
Clarity settled over him. Even though everything about the confrontation spelled disaster, he experienced a palpable shift in his mentality all at once. Like the fog of adrenalin and confusion had cleared.
As he ran full-pelt toward the slowing dump truck, he tightened his grip on the Five-seven in his left hand and exhaled deeply.
It was time to act.
He headed straight for the passenger-side door, anticipating the moves that would unfold a second before they happened. His intuition proved accurate. The door flew outward, kicked open by the man in the passenger seat. King caught a glimpse of a heavy-set combat boot and the glint of an assault rifle’s unsuppressed barrel in the afternoon sun.
He took a flying run-up and leapt straight in through the open door.
Chaos reigned. In the cramped cabin, King crushed against the cartel thug who had been in the process of exiting the vehicle. The pair slammed back against the centre console, almost colliding with the bloodied corpse of the driver, still slumped across the wheel.
King used the sudden confusion to bring the barrel of his Five-seven around in a tight arc. He shoved the steel into the upper half of the passenger’s forehead, forcing the man’s skull back against the headrest.
He pumped the trigger.
The shot rang through the truck’s interior. King caught a flash of movement through the gap between the driver and passenger’s seats. The cabin’s rear wall had been removed during the modification process, allowing easy access to the main body of the tank-on-wheels. Now, King stared through the narrow slit to see two Latino henchmen diving for cover, reacting to the unsuppressed gunshot up front.
They were both armed.
King noted their presence and ducked back outside, dropping into the dirt only a couple of seconds after diving into the cabin. He scurried around the side of the vehicle, listening intently for any sounds of movement from within.
Un
fortunately the steel armour coating the vehicle masked all noise coming from inside.
He reached the back of the truck and peered up at the two massive rear doors, both firmly bolted shut. There was no way inside from here. Still firing on all cylinders, he squatted low to minimise his target area and thought of another plan of attack.
He needn’t have bothered.
With an audible groan that came from directly above him, he ducked instinctively as both doors swung open. If he’d been standing up straight, the steel would have crushed into the side of his head, likely knocking him unconscious.
Thankfully, he was still crouching. He dropped to his stomach and rolled fast, taking skin off his forearms and elbows in the process. He had perhaps a second before he would come into view of the two henchmen, both of which he imagined were aiming their weapons out the rear of the truck in search of him.
In their haste to act, the two men leapt straight out of the interior.
King made it underneath the truck at the same time as their boots crunched into the gravel, inches from his face.
They would only have to turn around to see him there, cruelly exposed. There was at least a foot of space between the undercarriage of the truck and the valley floor below, thanks to the enormous modified wheels.
Stealth wasn’t an option, unfortunately.
King raised the Five-seven, acting out of impulse, and shot each man twice in the small of their backs. They seized up simultaneously, crippled by the horrific pain. Their legs gave out in unison and the pair dropped onto the loose rocks, all tension gone from their limbs.
King had a better aim now. He adjusted the sights and fired two final shots, treating each thug’s forehead as a bullseye target on the range. Their necks snapped back, one after the other, and they lay still.
Blood started to pool from the grisly exit wounds in the backs of their skulls.
As the reports of the gunshots echoed off the surrounding hillsides and faded quickly into silence, King rolled onto his back and let out the breath that had seized in his throat.