by Matt Rogers
‘Yes,’ Lars said. He seemed hesitant, like he was selecting his words incredibly carefully.
‘You think this is the last time we might talk?’ King said.
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘You have little faith.’
‘I’m just being realistic.’
‘Don’t be. We don’t operate in a realistic field.’
‘You think you can do it?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know that?!’ King barked, letting his emotions show for a brief moment. He brought himself back under control. ‘Look, I’m hanging onto my sanity by a thread here. I have no idea what I’m going to find when I reach the facility. I have no idea if Ramos is even still there. I’ve been sweating my ass off for the last few hours and I’m probably on the verge of falling asleep on the spot. In all likelihood, he’ll have a hundred ex-soldiers from the Guatemalan Army on his payroll and I’ll be shot to pieces for a few hundred dollars each of blood money.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Lars said. ‘No-one’s forcing you to. No-one even asked you to.’
‘Because who the hell else is going to do it?’ King said, suddenly riled up. ‘If I retreat, what message does that send? Between you and me — I want this division to be a success. I would rather work alone any day of the year. So I’m doing everything I can to make sure I accomplish what I set out to do in the first place.’
‘You’re a good man.’
King shrugged, even though Lars would never see it. ‘Look, that’s debatable.’
‘You’re very close,’ Lars said. ‘I’d recommend covering the rest of the trail on foot.’
‘On it. See you on the other side.’
‘Poor choice of words,’ Lars said.
King smirked and ended the call. He slowed the truck to a crawl in the middle of the trail and switched the headlights off with a flick of the lever next to the steering wheel. His surroundings were enveloped in sheer darkness, sending a tremor down his spine.
He stared at the three Kalashnikovs on the passenger seat. They had spent the journey clashing together, causing a ruckus inside the cabin. Quickly, he decided that carrying all three would act as more of a burden than an advantage. He grabbed one of the AK-47s, swung the door open, snatched up the satellite phone in the other hand and dropped into the mud outside the vehicle. As a final gesture, he fetched the wad of Guatemalan quetzals out of the centre console and shoved them into his rear pocket.
Just in case he needed to buy a ride out of the jungle…
He caught a glimpse of himself in the driver’s side mirror, and his eyes widened at the sight. The mud that he’d fallen into an hour previously had caked dry across his features, turning his skin almost entirely black. He could barely see himself in the reflection. His clothes were tattered and a thin sheen of sweat had set his muscles glistening in the lowlight.
He left the pick-up truck where it was and set off down the trail.
One man, a gun, and a phone.
Heading into the unknown.
He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
44
The first glimpse King received of the ancient city of Piedras Negras terrified him to the core.
He had been hiking through the jungle for the last ten minutes, avoiding the growls of nearby predators and the soft chirping of birds disturbed from their sleep. When he stepped through a collection of vast fern bushes and touched down on a flat expanse of grass and mud, he looked up to lock eyes with a towering, demonic face set into a cluster of stone rubble.
He jolted in surprise and touched a hand instinctively to the Kalashnikov hanging off his shoulder. It was an ancient mascaron, the type of ornament designed to ward off evil spirits. By that point his eyes had adjusted to the light, so he was able to stare into the twisted face’s gaping maw.
In fact, he thought he could see something stirring in the shadows…
He had reached the perimeter of the city, which as far as he could tell stretched for a few hundred feet in all directions. Most of it was devoid of vegetation, aside from overgrown moss and weeds dotting the ancient sculptures. There were plenty of them — King found himself taken aback by the sheer scale of the ancient ruins.
From the way Lars had described the Mayan site, he had expected little more than a small pile of decrepit rubble. What he laid eyes on was a sprawling ancient city, rundown and falling apart but still mostly intact. He saw remnants of a civilisation long extinct, and for a moment it made him pause. The setting stirred something in him — either a primal fear, or something much darker. He likened himself to an ancient warrior, clutching a modern weapon, heading through the madness to try and do some good.
Overhead, the canopy of trees had mostly cleared, revealing the dark sky above. King glanced up and saw the tropical storm set to unleash itself upon the jungle. The cumulonimbus clouds had swelled to a crescendo.
They were ready to release their payload.
King grimaced in the lowlight.
‘Great,’ he muttered. ‘Just great.’
The distractions turned his mind away from the flicker of movement he’d noticed in the mouth of the mascaron. When he turned his attention back to the giant face, he squinted into the gloom. Even though his eyes had adjusted to the night, it was still hard to ascertain exactly what was happening in the shadows.
Then a flash of light emanated from inside the small enclosure. King shielded his vision from the brief spark, recognising it as a lighter flame flickering into life. The flame touched the foot of a thick cigar, which flared in turn. Its owner was momentarily backlit by the soft flame.
There was no doubt he was a soldier — or at least used to be. He looked like a native Guatemalan, with weathered skin and hard lines creased into his forehead. He wore a simple khaki uniform with no insignia in sight, with his trousers tucked into brand-new combat boots. There was some kind of weapon at his feet. Either a sub-machine-gun, or an assault rifle. Big, bulky, fearsome.
Then the lighter was shut off and the interior of the mascaron’s mouth plunged back into darkness. The only visible sight was the soft, muted glow coming from the foot of the guy’s cigar.
A perimeter guard. Shielding himself from the approaching storm, lighting up a fat Cuban to calm his nerves. Maybe it was his first day on the job; an out-of-work soldier more than willing to serve Joaquín Ramos’ needs in exchange for a hefty payday.
King imagined the man paid well, given that working for him required stripping away one’s conscience.
King tried to stop thinking about the man in the alcove. He didn’t want to personalise him too much, because it was entirely likely that he would have to kill him.
He didn’t move a muscle, opting to blend into the jungle around him. He knew that the mud caked across his features would help to disguise his presence.
In the end, none of that mattered.
‘Hey!’ the guy suddenly screamed, fumbling for his rifle and letting the cigar drop into the floor of the mascaron’s mouth.
‘Shit,’ King muttered under his breath.
He had no other choice.
He raised the Kalashnikov up to rest against his shoulder, locked onto his target with the practiced motions of a trained professional, and pumped the trigger, holding it down for enough time to unleash a three-round burst out of the barrel.
In the otherwise-serene ambience of Piedras Negras, it sounded like three fireworks erupting simultaneously.
The perimeter guard died in a sudden blitz, jolted off his feet before he even had a chance to return fire, but the bedlam that erupted in the ancient city made King forget about the guard entirely.
He heard commotion far in the distance, panicked voices shouting at the top of their lungs. The racket drifted through the jungle. King could hear it clearly, despite the tinnitus setting in from the unsuppressed gunshots right near his head.
He stomached abject horror and sprinted across to the demonic face in the rubble, crouching in its
lee while he rapidly assessed what to do.
There could be a hundred men headed for his position.
Breathe, he thought.
He inhaled a lungful of thick, rancid jungle air and let it sit in his lungs for a long three seconds. Then he exhaled slowly, drawing out the breath for an extended period of time.
It stilled his racing heart for a short while.
It gave him enough time to think.
He heard the footsteps heading through the ancient city. The ruins seemed to amplify the noise, turning the approaching paramilitary force into a distant rumble akin to a herd of sprinting buffalo.
Here we go, he thought again.
All the training. All the relentless hours in the gym. All the kickboxing and Muay Thai sparring and jiu-jitsu work and weapons training and time on the shooting range and physical fitness courses. All the mental discipline, pushing his body to its limits over and over again in an attempt to gain an edge on the battlefield.
It all came down to this.
All of his gruelling work would be rendered useless if he didn’t make it through the coming firefight.
With that thought lodged firmly in his mind, he tightened his grip on the Kalashnikov and prepared for war.
His peripheral vision shrank away, narrowing in on what lay directly in front of him.
He set his expression to steel.
He rounded the corner, leaving the mascaron behind, freeing himself from its twisted glare.
He stalked through the ruins of Piedras Nagras without making the slightest noise.
Staring straight ahead.
Searching for any sign of movement.
Jason King, solo operative, ready for whatever lay ahead.
Doing what he was born to do.
45
King broke into a sprint down a mossy, narrow corridor between two of the decaying structures. He had heard someone approaching at the end of the path, and wanted to seize the upper hand before the man came into view.
He couldn’t have timed it better.
The man who came stumbling into view had clearly been abusing human-growth-hormone or other testosterone-replacement-therapy products for the last decade, at least. It had clearly been black market synthetic stuff, unregulated and untested. He was Guatemalan too, with pockmarked cheeks from horrendous acne and skin that had turned burning red from excessive steroid abuse. His muscles bulged obscenely, complete with the perfectly-rounded shoulders and bulging trapezius muscles that lent him the appearance of a wild, rabid dog.
He clearly enjoyed his opiates, too.
His eyes were as dilated as the mobile drug-runner King had confronted back in the forest, amped up on cocaine and a cocktail of other stimulants. He was armed — wielding an identical Kalashnikov AK-47 — but King didn’t think that would pose much of a problem.
He wondered how the ex-Army thug was conscious enough to even walk.
By the time the guy had stumbled into view, searching maniacally for a target, King’s mad dash had allowed him to bear down on top of the man.
He thudded into the guy’s chest, shoulder bone driving into sternum, sending the man flying back into the rubble behind him. King had less muscle than the guy, but the man’s grotesque physique was clearly the result of artificial enhancement rather than sheer hard work.
The contrast was astounding.
King effectively manhandled the guy, bouncing him off the mossy stone wall and dropping him to the forest floor with a single right hook to the jaw. Nerve endings fired in his knuckles as they crunched against the lower half of the man’s chin, rattling his brain hard enough to send him to his knees in a semi-conscious state.
The guy didn’t even get a chance to fire his weapon.
King opted not to either. He didn’t want to give away his position to whoever else was coming after him.
He planted a boot into the guy’s face, applying just enough pressure to knock him unconscious and send him sprawling back into the undergrowth. King elected not to grab the second AK-47 the man had dropped.
Dual wielding rifles looked impressive in action movies, but in the real world it spelt disaster. He would rather wield a single firearm with greater accuracy than sprint around Piedras Negras unleashing a firestorm of bullets at no-one in particular.
He stepped over the thug he’d put to sleep and pressed on.
The path through the maze of ruins took a sharp turn up ahead, limiting King’s view of what lay in front of him. It made him uncomfortable, coupled with the fat raindrops that began to fall from the heavens.
He glanced skyward and saw the rain intensifying with each passing second.
Soon enough, these paths would turn to canals.
Thunder flared overhead, resonating through the ruins. King continued down the path, thinking nothing of the booming noise. It blocked out all other sound…
…to his own detriment.
Muffled by the blast of relentless thunder, King didn’t hear the man sprinting across the rubble at eye-level. With the crumbling city sprawling out in a tight grid of pathways, the trails between the ruined buildings acted as trenches of sorts. King didn’t see the thug dive into his trench until it was too late. A rapid flurry of movement filled his vision, and a half-second later contact was made.
He had no time to react.
The boot planted square in the centre of his face, coming at the very end of a flying dropkick. King didn’t hear the crack of snapping bone — instead, he felt it deep in his brain. His head exploded with liquid fire, thumping and roaring and tearing through his sinuses as his nerve endings dealt with his horrifically broken septum.
It was the first time his nose had ever been shattered in the heat of combat.
Deep down, he knew that if he survived this encounter, it certainly wouldn’t be the last time.
He felt his legs go weak, which frustrated him no end. He grunted as the pain sent him down on his rear, thumping into the muddy trail with enough force to rattle his senses. His eyes began to water instinctively, blurring his vision. He blinked back excruciating pain, scrambled to his feet, and brought the Kalashnikov around to search for his target.
It was also the first time he had ever been put on the back foot in a live situation.
The true horror of grievous battlefield injuries hit him. He found himself unable to see, unable to hear, unable to think. Somewhere in front of him stood one of Ramos’ henchmen, probably closing in, but King was oblivious to it. Rain began to fall in thick sheets, soaking through his hair, mixing with the blood pouring out of his nostrils.
He gasped, sucking in air.
Another blow drove into his stomach, rupturing something inside him. It proved that the first punch hadn’t been a lucky shot. His assailant had years of training in striking — whether that be boxing or Muay Thai. He followed his punches through with a certain whip, a crack that added mountains of pressure to the blows. King doubled over as the knuckles crashed into his stomach, tearing muscle.
He switched gears.
Something activated inside him.
It was the knowledge that if he didn’t respond to this relentless attack, he would succumb to the pain and find himself defenceless against a literal horde of trained killers.
He rolled away from the next blow, tearing moss out of the ground as he did so. The torrential rainfall dousing his face allowed him a brief reprieve from the horrendous pain, clearing his senses for just enough time.
He saw the guy advancing toward him for the first time.
He was enormous, at least six-foot-three, with roughly the same build as King. He had his fists balled determinedly. The man was of Asian descent, with the deep skin tone native to Thailand.
Muay Thai, King concluded.
A hired beatdown-artist, no doubt.
But he’d make the single mistake that would prove his demise.
He’d allowed King to make space.
King seized hold of the AK-47 he’d dropped a moment ago, swung the barrel
up to meet the man’s unprotected face at a blistering speed, and fired once.
The guy barely had time to widen his eyes. He took the bullet straight between his teeth. It was hard to make out in the darkness of the night-time storm, but King thought he saw brains and gore splatter out of the exit wound as the bullet punched through the back of the guy’s mouth.
He twisted away, unquestionably dead, hitting the ground on his stomach and slumping to an early grave.
King let out a roar of pain, trying to release some of the vicious throbbing in his face. He could barely concentrate, but the massive spike in adrenalin levels was keeping him upright. He stumbled over the Asian man’s dead body, cursing the guy’s talents. His stomach burned and his nose had already swelled to a bloody, uncontrollable mess.
He pondered exactly how he was going to make it through what lay ahead.
46
The storm beat down, merciless in its intensity.
King made it to the edge of Piedras Negras, but the amount of time it took him to do so was lost on him. His consciousness had blurred into a single-handed attempt to mask the pain in his nose. He needed all his reflexes and senses ready to go for any potential confrontation, and that had been sorely impaired by the facial injury.
The rain washed the mud off his features in seconds.
He had never experienced weather quite like it. Sure, the United States had its fair share of storms — but he had never spent time in a region where the tropical storms sent rain down with such intensity that it was hard to breathe. For a moment, the panic of drowning seized King in its icy grasp. He shook it off and sucked in great, deep breaths through his mouth, inhaling the sheets of water as he did so.
As he accidentally swallowed a mouthful of rainwater, he coughed up the contents of his stomach, vomiting as the liquid triggered his gag reflex.
He wiped his mouth and pressed on to the outskirts of the city.
Above the din of the rainfall, commotion sounded from within the ruins. King could see flashlight beams flaring and darting around the maze of pathways. He kept low, allowing the agony of his broken nose to settle into a dull ache, and then turned away from the ancient city.