Imprisoned: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 2)

by Matt Rogers

  ‘Stop overthinking things,’ King said as shipwrecks flashed past on either side. ‘Just follow me. I’ll get this done.’

  ‘You’re awfully confident.’

  ‘Have to be. I’d be shitting my pants otherwise.’

  Up ahead, the ocean twinkled under the sun, which had just reached its apex in the sky. The edge of the shipyard came into view as they drew closer to the water. The Cobra flew past a final shipwreck obscuring the way and he finally saw the layout of Rico’s stronghold.

  The cruise ship rested in an inlet just large enough to fit its gargantuan frame. It seemed to dwarf everything else in proximity. Previously white, most of the paint on its exterior had peeled off, revealing the dirty foundations underneath. In various places, the framework had collapsed, to the point where it looked like a giant beast had gouged chunks out of the ship.

  King took in the sight of the behemoth, and then he noted the rest of the scene. His stomach fell into a deep pit.

  He needn’t have bothered chasing the two Movers into the apartment complex. Because Rico had known an attack was imminent for some time.

  And he’d prepared accordingly.

  King stared out the windscreen at a barricade that had been erected in front of the cruise ship, made up of dozens of heavy-duty vehicles parked nose-to-end. Behind the trucks and sedans and pick-ups, more than thirty armed men stood in wait, barrels raised. They’d been simply waiting for the moment that King and Raul would come tearing around the corner.

  Someone had tipped them off. Not the two scouts in the apartment complex. Sometime before that…

  They unloaded their weapons simultaneously.

  King slammed on the brakes, partially due to shock at the sudden turn of events, mostly due to the realisation that a head-on approach would accomplish nothing against such a well-prepared force. A hailstorm of bullets slammed against the front of the Cobra, hundreds and hundreds of rounds smashing into the steel and bulletproof glass at an overwhelming pace. The resulting cacophony of noise made King flinch. The din roared all around them.

  ‘What the hell!’ Raul screamed above the racket. ‘They knew we were coming!’

  King grit his teeth. ‘Looks like your friend José might be Rico’s friend José.’

  ‘Then why would he give us all this shit? He would have just killed us at the warehouse.’

  King paused. ‘Good question. What the fuck’s going on?’

  Whatever the case, he knew one of the Movers would eventually get their hands on anti-tank weaponry if they stayed stationary in no man’s land. There was nothing they could do against Rico’s forces, especially when every man in the shipyard had been prepared for an assault.

  King slammed the gearbox into reverse. He spun the wheel and punched the accelerator at the same time. In a scream of smoking rubber, the Cobra spun in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc, bullets bouncing off its hull the entire time.

  ‘What are you doing?!’ Raul said.

  ‘Retreating.’

  ‘My family’s in that ship…’

  ‘We’ll be no use to them dead.’

  ‘Rico will kill them now that he knows we’re here.’

  ‘I know, Raul!’ King roared. ‘Give me a moment.’

  But he didn’t have a moment, because just as he prepared to round the corner of the nearest shipwreck and take cover behind its massive frame, a frenetic explosion of movement broke out ahead. King jolted in shock. The sight took a second to process.

  ‘What the—’

  A convoy of vehicles tore into sight, all beat-up and rusting but armoured with steel plates and other forms of amateur work. Several of them were pick-up trucks complete with pairs and trios of men perched in the rear trays, brandishing all kinds of shiny assault rifles. King spotted a couple of M32 grenade launchers identical to the haul littered across the Cobra’s floor.

  Armed by José, without a doubt.

  ‘What have we stumbled into?’ King said, in awe at the sudden surge of armed forces.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Raul whispered. ‘That’s not good.’

  King quickly realised that Rico’s forces hadn’t been preparing for him and Raul. They’d been bracing themselves for a skirmish with these new arrivals. It seemed that some kind of gang in competition with the Movers had chosen today to launch an assault on their compound.

  The Otokar Cobra rested directly in the middle of an all-out war.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Cobra screeched to a halt once again as King hit the brakes. Chaos raged all around them as both sides exchanged bullets. He heard the familiar whump of a discharged M32 and clenched all his muscles simultaneously. If that grenade launcher had been aimed in their direction, it may be the last noise he ever heard.

  The distant noise of an explosion ripped through the shipyard, overpowering the storm of gunfire. It came from behind them, somewhere in the midst of Rico’s ranks. King breathed a momentary sigh of relief and assessed the situation.

  It didn’t look good. They were boxed in by shipwrecks, trapped in the middle of the carnage. If they pressed onwards into the hostile forces, he didn’t doubt that a stray round from one of the M32s would find its way into their vehicle’s hull. Survival was highly questionable. He thought back to the brief glimpse he’d got of Rico’s forces, and couldn’t recall whether they had been armed with high explosives.

  It was all he had to go off. A wild guess.

  He could antagonise these new enemies, or charge headlong into Rico’s forces. Little good was likely to come from either option. But he had to make a decision, right now. Stalling in the dead space between the two forces would get them killed without question. So he spun the wheel again, aiming back in the same direction they’d just come from.

  ‘King?’ Raul said.

  King pressed the Cobra forward with a surge of acceleration. It swung in a wide arc, its hull screaming under the impact of hundreds of stray rounds. The deafening rattle made his eardrums ring, but he grit his teeth and ignored it. Now was not the time to get cold feet.

  ‘King,’ Raul said, a little more urgently.

  He completed the one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Rico’s forces remained behind the crude barricade, firing indiscriminately at both the Cobra and the approaching convoy. The side of the cruise ship loomed behind them, resting in the inlet, separated from the dock by a dozen feet of empty space. He assumed that a drawbridge usually connected the two sections together. Now it had been removed, to prevent enemy forces reaching the ship.

  No matter.

  Pick up enough speed and momentum would carry them across.

  ‘King!’ Raul roared.

  ‘We need to get inside the cruise ship,’ he said. ‘Once we’re in there, I can find Rico. I can kill him. I can find your family.’

  ‘How do you propose we do that?’

  ‘Hold onto something.’

  With a roar of recognition, the Cobra’s engine responded to a press on the accelerator. King’s stomach dropped as the massive armoured vehicle roared towards the barricade, travelling faster with each passing second.

  He guessed they would hit the parked vehicles at close to sixty miles an hour.

  Raul baulked as he realised what was about to happen. The man reached over with the verve of someone terrified beyond belief, fumbling frantically for the steering wheel, desperate to correct the Cobra’s course.

  King battered his hand away. ‘You want to see your mother and sister again?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ll die if we do this.’

  ‘We might. But we’ve got more of a chance than any other option.’

  They got close enough for King to make out individual faces in the blockade. The Movers were either reloading or firing, their gaze fixed on the armoured behemoth charging straight at them. Their small-arms fire did nothing to penetrate the Cobra’s hull. King flicked his vision across the ranks, searching for any kind of weapon that posed a threat.

  He saw it.

  An old-school RPG
-7 shoulder launcher resting on the collar bone of a skinny thug crouched behind a battered pick-up truck.

  The guy rose from his position and took aim, pointing a bulky warhead directly at King. King locked eyes with him through the windscreen and knew he was staring death in the face. The warhead was a PG-7VR, designed specifically with armoured vehicles in mind. Shaped like a miniature space shuttle, the huge explosive contained two separate warheads — one for crippling the exterior and then a second delayed explosive that would pass through the newly created gap and detonate further inside the hull in spectacular fashion. If it hit the Cobra, he and Raul would die instantaneously.

  He had to do something to deter the Mover’s aim in the next few seconds.

  In one fluid motion he unbuckled his seatbelt and scrambled further back inside the Cobra, leaving the vehicle driverless. Raul screamed, a cry of surprise that ripped through the cabin. King snatched up the closest pair of M32 launchers and dove for the porthole. No further action was necessary other than looping a finger in each trigger guard and firing. He’d made sure the launchers were primed and ready for use back at José’s compound.

  There were six 40mm grenades in each launcher.

  He stuck both barrels out the top of the Cobra, aimed in the general direction of the Movers’ barricade, and pumped each trigger until both weapons clicked empty.

  Twelve total rounds, fired in the space of a couple of seconds. It was highly unlikely that all would hit their mark, but that wasn’t King’s intention.

  Hopefully, enough chaos had been caused by the sudden barrage of explosives that the Mover with the RPG would hesitate.

  King made it back into the driver’s seat mere seconds after leaving it, discarding both empty launchers on the way through. He felt his chest vibrate as the grenades hit home, detonating against the sides of cars and thunking into the concrete dock. Raul’s eyes boggled in his skull at the sight.

  King had no time to admire his handiwork.

  They were a few dozen feet away from impact.

  He saw the cluster of vehicles ahead rushing up to meet them. The Cobra would crush through the blockade at any moment. After that, there was no telling what would happen. King lurched to get his seatbelt back on, at the same time realising he had miscalculated a few things. The impact would be beyond devastating. But there was no time to back out now.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Raul whispered, gripping the sides of his seat as tight as he could, knuckles white, sweat dripping off his brow.

  ‘Fuck,’ was all King had time to say before the Cobra obliterated the vehicles in its wake.

  The collision shook him far worse than the impact with the gate. His whole world spun. His vision blurred. The leather over his shoulder bit into his skin with incredible force, sending pain flaring through his chest. The sensory overload incapacitated him, making him unable to work out where they were, whether they were still travelling forward, if they had passed through the barricade or not.

  When he got a grip on reality, he instantly realised they were no longer on flat ground.

  The Cobra had overturned.

  He felt the power behind its enormous bulk as the wheels on the left-hand-side lifted off the concrete. The Cobra had been thrown off-balance by the jarring collision. Carried by its own momentum, the vehicle entered an unstoppable barrel-roll, bursting through the barrier of vehicles. Tearing metal and flying car parts raged all around them. King reached out for any kind of handhold he could find.

  His heart thumped hard in his chest. He had no idea whether he would survive the next few seconds. A certain acceptance occurred when a situation was thrown into the hands of fate. There was nothing he could do but hold on for dear life and hope that the Cobra came to rest somewhere safe.

  He saw nothing but a blur as the vehicle rolled. Its ceiling slammed into the dock, sending all the loose weapons in the cabin flying. Then it rolled again. King managed a single fleeting glance out the windscreen and bit his tongue out of shock.

  They would roll over the lip of the dock.

  ‘Come on!’ he screamed, urging the Cobra to carry enough momentum to bridge the gap. If it dropped into the space between the port and the cruise ship, they would be trapped in a watery grave.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Raul said.

  There came the familiar stomach drop as the Cobra rolled off the dock and became airborne. Raul screamed. King grit his teeth. Both scenarios that could possibly unfold would carry consequences with them. He hadn’t expected them to end up in this situation. Either they would fall into the ocean, or hit the side of the cruise ship still upside-down.

  Accompanied by a sound similar to a bomb going off in his ears, King felt the Cobra plough into the ship’s exterior.

  With twenty-six thousand pounds of weight behind it, the vehicle simply demolished the wall. It tumbled inside the ship, buckling steel and destroying plaster and wood and furniture. Under its bulk, the floor of the room they entered gave out. King’s stomach dropped for the second time in the space of the minute as the Cobra fell a storey.

  It came to rest on its side, surrounded by debris and destruction.

  King slammed against his seatbelt. His neck whipped back. He struck the back of his head against the hard plastic casing of the driver’s seat and his vision blurred. He let his arms dangle as he struggled to bring his heart rate under control, still suspended by the leather across his chest.

  He coughed hard and took a deep breath.

  They were alive.

  He glanced across and saw Raul still straining to hold onto his seat. His eyes were squeezed firmly shut. His face was a pale, sweaty mask.

  ‘We’re okay,’ King said, more to reassure himself than Raul.

  Raul opened his eyes and looked around. ‘What the hell…’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Adrenalin?’

  Raul nodded. King understood the feeling. Seconds after preparing to meet death, the man was so hopped up with nervous energy that it made assessing his wellbeing next to impossible. He could have a plethora of broken bones and still feel fine for the next few minutes.

  ‘But you can move?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of this thing. We’re nowhere near out of this.’

  Compared to the insanity of the port, the eerie silence inside the cruise ship unnerved King. He unbuckled his belt and dropped against the side of the interior, resting one foot against the cracked windscreen. Then he helped Raul out of his seat. The man’s hands shook uncontrollably. King didn’t blame him.

  From somewhere outside, he heard the muffled din of conflict raging. The exchanging of gunfire. The reverberations of grenade blasts.

  ‘What’s happening out there?’ Raul said as they clambered along the Cobra’s interior. ‘Who’s attacking Rico?’

  ‘I’m just as confused as you are,’ King said. ‘But let’s focus on what we need to do. We have all the time in the world to work that out later.’

  ‘It’s a convenient distraction, at least,’ Raul said.

  King sifted through the mess of objects scattered across the floor of the Cobra. All the loose items had been churned around the interior like a washing machine during the roll. He found a fully loaded HK417. He looped the strap over his shoulder and slotted a finger into the trigger guard. For extra caution, he stuck a couple of spare magazines into his rear pockets.

  That would do.

  Overloading himself with an arsenal of weaponry would be ineffective at such close quarters. A single high-powered assault rifle was adequate.

  Raul picked up an identical gun with a curious look on his face. King assumed the man had zero training with modern weaponry and counted him out of whatever lay ahead. If he wanted to eliminate Rico, he would have to do it himself.

  They clambered out of the hole in the Cobra’s ceiling, which now rested on its side. King observed the scene around them.

  Their entrance had caused
substantial damage. The roof over their heads had been mangled beyond belief, taking the full brunt of an armoured vehicle before giving way. They had come to rest in what appeared to be one of the dining rooms, a long low space with tiles the colour of oatmeal and walls the colour of mahogany. Identical circular tables covered in white cloths spanned all the way up to a deserted dance floor and bar. The furniture within a dozen-foot radius of the Cobra had either been smashed into oblivion or thrown across the room with considerable force. The vehicle had left a trail of destruction in its wake.

  Meals hadn’t been served in the premises for what looked to be years. Dust lay over everything. King felt the structure groan around him and began to get a sense of just how large the ship truly was. Simply finding a Mover in this gargantuan maze would be a sizeable task.

  He searched for an exit door and found one. An empty doorway, leading into a narrow corridor that spiralled away into the bowels of the ship. It was as good a place to start as any. He took a step in that direction.

  Then he looked again and realised the doorway was occupied after all.

  Rico stood in the lee of the hallway outside, staring at them with unmasked surprise on his face. He must have seen their catastrophic entrance with his own eyes. The coincidental nature of his location hadn’t given King enough time to react properly. He found himself a beat slower than usual. Which put him in a messy situation.

  Rico levelled a pistol at his head at the same time that he brought the own barrel of his HK417 up. No-one fired. Both men had a subtle awareness of each other’s talent, an unspoken recognition that each of their reflexes were honed enough to ensure two deaths if either one fired.

  ‘Well, that was a coincidence, wasn’t it?’ Rico said, his voice echoing through the empty room.

  CHAPTER 43

  King didn’t respond. Raul had frozen with his barrel aimed at the floor, not fast enough to be involved in the stand-off. He observed the situation with shaky hands — aware that one wrong move would set off a chain reaction that would kill all three of them in a hail of bullets.