by Matt Rogers
‘It’s what I’ve always done, Shien,’ he muttered.
They climbed the same stairwell, inhaling the abhorrent combination of dampness and rot that had needled its way into Slater’s brain over the last twelve hours. The five-star suites were a thing of the past. Despite the less-than-favourable conditions, something about the dingy surroundings felt familiar to him.
It felt like home.
He had no idea what to expect from 516. They’d been given a key, which gave them direct access to the apartment, which eliminated privacy from the equation. Whoever resided in the flat wouldn’t be able to prevent them from entering. It made Slater think that whoever they’d be meeting wasn’t in bed with Shien’s captors.
Another scapegoat, perhaps.
A chain of people thrust into a difficult situation to separate the men responsible from any guilt.
He kept that in the back of his mind as they strode out into the familiar fifth-floor corridor. Slater pressed a hand instinctively to Shien’s shoulder, holding her back while he checked whether the coast was clear. The hallway lay empty — he guessed the residents were either drugged to the eyeballs or at work. He glanced at the carpet outside room 502 — the bloodstain where the thug with the jewelled earring had collapsed was barely noticeable amidst the surrounding filth.
In retrospect, he couldn’t have picked a better location to shoot a man dead.
It seemed like the event had barely registered in this place. No-one had responded with panic to the gunshot — in fact, nobody appeared at all.
A fully unsuppressed blast from a Beretta M9 must be considered relatively normal around these parts.
It sent a shiver down his spine. If he or Shien wound up dead in one of these apartments, no-one would ever know. Their bodies would be tucked away and left to rot, without anyone realising.
Everything stank of rot around here.
He wondered how long it would take for someone to find the dead thug in room 502.
Weeks, he imagined.
From their position in the lip of the stairwell, he had a perfect view of the door to apartment number 516. It sat in a shadowy corner of the decrepit corridor, unimpressive and unnoticeable. He remained frozen in the middle of the hallway, listening for signs of anything suspicious. Finding nothing, he released his hold on Shien and withdrew the Beretta from his suit jacket.
‘I want you to knock on the door and stand in front of it,’ he muttered, keeping his voice low.
‘Why?’ she whispered back. ‘We have a key.’
‘I don’t want to barge in. They might be preparing for that.’
‘Who?’
‘Anyone’s guess. None of this makes any sense if I’m being honest. But if they see you standing out here alone, they might drop their guard. I can force my way in.’
‘Are you going to kill more people?’ Shien said, her voice stammering.
She was terrified of the possibility.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise you anything. It depends who answers the door.’
Her eyes turned to the Beretta in his right palm, and she shivered involuntarily.
‘Can you do this for me, Shien?’ he said. ‘I need your help if I’m going to sort this out.’
‘Okay.’
Nothing about her response signalled confidence, but Slater didn’t need her to be confident.
He just needed her to knock.
They slunk down the corridor, their shoes squelching against the damp carpet. Slater tuned the disgusting surroundings out of his conscious thought and narrowed his vision on the door with 516 inscribed in the wooden surface. He guided Shien into position and retreated to the far side of the hallway, keeping low, searching for somewhere he could take cover while maintaining line of sight.
He noticed a narrow doorway embedded in the wall opposite 516, leading to a secondary stairwell in even scummier condition than the first. Slater could barely make out the dark space through the fingerprint-stained window set into the door, but a smattering of faded warning signs indicated that the stairwell was some kind of fire escape. He nudged the swinging door open a foot and retreated into the shadows, taking care not to inhale at risk of passing out from the horrific stench.
And there he waited, crouched like a phantom in the darkness, Beretta clutched in a sweaty palm, leaning against the door with his back to a dark, musty stairwell. He whispered, ‘Now,’ to Shien and she reached a closed fist up and rapped it twice on the door to apartment number 516.
Slater poised like a tensed coil, ready for anything.
The door swung open.
15
If the movements of the man who answered the door had been hostile in any manner, Slater would have charged across the corridor like a bat out of hell. But he came across something entirely different — the door peeped open a crack and a nervous voice with a thick British accent stammered, ‘A-are you alone?’
‘Yes,’ Shien said, remaining remarkably composed in the face of such a volatile situation.
Slater couldn’t get a good look at the guy due to the angle of the door, but he seemed scared as shit. Slater was forced into a spur-of-the-moment decision — stay out of sight and let Shien venture into the apartment alone, or present himself and terrify the British guy into resistance.
In the end, Slater couldn’t imagine the guy posed much of a threat, and he needed answers.
He opted to wait.
A few seconds more.
Just to see how things transpired.
‘I … I was told you had company,’ the British guy said.
‘No,’ Shien said. ‘Just me.’
‘Um, I’m supposed to get some codes off you. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
‘Yes.’ Shien made an act out of glancing in either direction down the hallway. ‘You sure you want to do the exchange out here? Maybe I could come in.’
‘Oh. Yeah. That’s a good idea. Sorry, I’m just nervous — y-you sure there’s no-one with you?’
‘Why would there be anyone with me?’
‘I don’t know — that’s just what I was told.’
‘Just me,’ Shien repeated.
Slater couldn’t help himself — he was damn impressed. Often in sensitive circumstances people who were nervous unloaded everything in their brains all at once. Shien could have easily started trying to justify the reasons why she was alone, all of which would only serve to give the British guy time to think and grow more suspicious. By keeping her responses to a minimum, the onus fell onto the guy to make conversation — something he was struggling with given his level of nerves. Instead of asking what had happened to the man who was supposed to be accompanying Shien, he was forced onto the back foot.
‘Uh, yeah, okay. Come in.’
He opened the door a little wider, and Shien stepped forward.
As soon as she started to disappear from sight, Slater’s natural instincts kicked in. He couldn’t leave her alone in an apartment with a complete stranger — no matter how nervous the guy was or whether or not he’d been forced into the position. It still left all kinds of variables he wasn’t comfortable with, so he tightened his grip on the Beretta and began to move out of the shadows to intercept the British guy as Shien brushed past him.
Shien moved through the doorway into the apartment, and the door started to swing close.
Slater pressed faster.
Then a vicious burst of kinetic movement sounded behind him, tearing his attention away from the task at hand. He froze and spun on his heel, pivoting to get a proper look at what was unfolding.
He saw three people in the gloom — all of them had made their way silently up the stairwell behind him, planning to step out onto the fifth floor undetected. Slater’s presence had frightened them — maybe they hadn’t seen him crouched in the doorway. When he’d burst out into the open they’d sprinted up behind him to try and catch him off-guard.
All three were Asian, and all three were armed with sid
earms and dressed in tactical combat gear.
Their guns swept up through the air, on trajectory to aim at Slater’s face, but no-one had fired a shot yet.
They were hesitant to make noise and startle the natural flow of things.
Maybe they had been sent to retrieve Shien.
Either way, Slater didn’t give a shit about making noise.
He flicked the Beretta up to shoulder height and blasted the closest thug’s face apart with a single unsuppressed round.
16
The corridor turned to bedlam.
Slater guessed the British guy had slammed the door in panic, sealing he and Shien inside the apartment, but he had no way of knowing for sure. His hearing had been destroyed by the close-range gunshot, and he had no time to turn and look before the first thug’s corpse pitched forward and crashed into him, carried by the momentum of the guy’s charge.
Slater couldn’t help himself — he instinctively recoiled. Blood from the dead man’s forehead splattered across him and he naturally stepped away from it.
A grave error.
The guy was heavyset — thick and big-boned. He had the stocky build of a powerhouse and when his dead bodyweight collapsed against Slater’s chest it sent him stumbling off his feet, zigzagging uncontrollably across the corridor. He slammed back-first into the wall next to apartment number 516 and the damp plaster caved in under his weight, sending him reeling back into the foundations themselves.
Rancid water splashed down over him, disrupted by the gaping hole in the wall. Slater had no time to pull himself out of the half-seated position inside the wood — the dead thug’s trajectory carried him straight down on top of Slater, his mass sprawling against Slater’s torso.
Slater grunted with frustration, then instinctively pulled the dead man in front of him as the other two fired.
Twin gunshots roared down the hallway, and the dead man on top of Slater jerked unnaturally as he took two bullets to the torso. Thankfully, his weight meant that the lead remained embedded in his ribcage instead of blasting straight through and sinking into Slater.
There was a beat of hesitation as the two remaining thugs realised they’d just fired on their own man.
In the chaos and confusion, they hadn’t been able to tell if Slater’s bullet had killed their friend. They might have thought the man lost his balance and simply stumbled into Slater — which would add the mental torment that they might have possibly just murdered their comrade.
Slater used it to his advantage.
Still gripping the Beretta — which had become sandwiched between his stomach and the dead man’s body mass — he found purchase on the damp carpet and levered himself out of the hole in the wall, heaving the corpse upright at the same time. As soon as he’d wrenched himself free from the torn wood and sprung to his feet, he thundered a front kick into the dead guy’s stomach, sending his bodyweight hurtling back in the other direction.
The corpse slumped uselessly against the other two men.
They mimicked Slater’s previous actions, recoiling away from the body. This was their close friend, a man who had been alive and functioning seconds previously — now he was bleeding from the forehead and the torso, stone dead and slumping in gruesome fashion across them. They stepped back, throwing themselves off-balance in the process.
A terrible move.
It opened up the slightest window of opportunity for Slater to act.
He raised the Beretta and fired twice, slicing his aim from forehead to forehead, clinical in his movements. Twin explosions of gunshot reports resonated down the hallway, and blood arced from the exit wounds that blasted out the back of both men’s skulls.
They dropped like rag dolls, hitting the ground in unison with the first guy, who had been thrust from man to man like a hot potato. The trio of corpses made a collective thump as they splayed out across the filthy carpet, each sporting a neat bullet hole in the centre of their foreheads. The first guy had a pair of rounds embedded in the meat of his back — Slater identified that as the source of all the blood.
He stood panting in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by dead men, shocked by the rapidity with which the situation had escalated. Now that the massive bolt of adrenalin had run its course he felt warmth across his upper back. He reached one hand over the opposite shoulder and winced as he ran his fingers over wooden splinters embedded in his skin.
They’d effortlessly torn through his suit jacket.
‘I just bought this fucking thing,’ he muttered, disgruntled.
The tailored fit had cost him several thousand dollars.
With the shock of the sudden ambush wearing off, he picked up signs of commotion all the way along the hallway. Five gunshots in quick succession had disturbed the peace, no matter whether the residents were accustomed to violence or not. Slater stared down at the three corpses — a whole lot of bodyweight — and grunted a realisation that he couldn’t hide them in the same way he’d dealt with the first guy’s corpse earlier that morning.
Shien.
He pivoted on his heel, tearing his attention away from the dead men, and searched for the door to apartment number 516. In the panic he’d lost his bearings, but it didn’t take him long to locate the flimsy panel of wood with the corresponding number engraved on its surface. As he suspected, the British guy had become terrified by the sudden onslaught of noise and locked the door behind him.
There was no sign of Shien.
She was in there.
A deeper, darker instinct took hold and Slater shouldered his whole weight into the centre of the wooden door. The material heaved and groaned, and gave way a half-second later. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to crash straight through the door or simply burst the lock open — either way, he was on course to barrel his way into the apartment at a blistering rate.
Exactly what he was accustomed to.
The hinges gave way before the lock did, and the entire door simply crashed into the front hallway in a burst of tearing wood. Slater powered straight over the top of the falling panel, storming straight into 516.
First, he noticed that the filthy room had the same layout as the first apartment they’d entered in the early hours of the morning — an unimpressive windowless room with a kitchenette and a bed.
Second, Slater noticed the British guy huddled in one corner of the room, holding Shien in front of him.
He noticed her shaking where she stood, pale and sweating and horrified.
There was a gun to her head.
17
‘I’d put that fucking thing down if I were you,’ Slater snarled.
He meant it.
He recognised all the features of abject terror on the British guy’s face, and he understood the dynamic the man was working with — the guy had no knowledge of who Slater was and what kind of threat he posed, and had elected to use whatever he could to try and protect himself from harm.
But he’d chosen the wrong person to hold hostage.
‘L-look, buddy, I don’t know who you are, but leave me alone!’ the British guy said. ‘Just leave. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m following orders. I’m not trying to hurt anyone. Please, just—’
Slater stayed deathly still in the lip of the hallway, keeping the Beretta pointed squarely at the floor. He wasn’t going to aim it at the British guy’s head — he was trying his best to prevent any kind of knee jerk reaction to getting a weapon aimed at one’s temple.
‘Put. The. Gun. Down.’
‘Who are you?’ the British guy said, and his voice changed pitch drastically, cracking in the face of fear. ‘What do you want?’
Slater realised he was young and impressionable and inexperienced. He had something to work with. He didn’t take his eyes off the guy. He could sense Shien just a foot below, in his peripheral vision, staring at him silently with pleading, watering eyes.
Get this gun off the side of my head, Will, her eyes were saying. I’m scared.
‘What’s you
r name, kid?’ Slater said.
‘Samuel Barnes.’
‘Samuel Barnes, I don’t really want to have to kill you. That girl you’re holding is with me, and it’s my responsibility to keep her alive. Take the fucking weapon away from her temple and we’ll talk.’
‘How do I know you’re not going to kill me?’
‘Samuel…’
‘Look, man, I can’t take your word for—’
‘Put it down!’ Slater roared at the top of his lungs, shockingly loud in the claustrophobic space.
Samuel visibly jolted, and fresh tears spilled down Shien’s face. Slater could sense the raw, unbridled terror in the air — she thought she was about to die.
The pistol — an archaic Polish P-64 likely purchased dirt cheap on the black market — faltered as Samuel wilted under the stress. He bowed his head and began to let the barrel fall toward the floor.
‘Please, just don’t kill me, man,’ he muttered as he started to cave in.
Slater took no chances. As soon as the weapon was pointed away from Shien, he burst across the room like a raging bull and hurled her onto the bed, throwing her away from Samuel with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs. Shien bounced off the mattress and came to a halt, breathless but out of harm’s way.
Slater grabbed two handfuls of Samuel’s shirt and kneed him in the stomach with the force of a seasoned Muay Thai practitioner. The kid crumpled as the breath exploded out of his lips. He spluttered and coughed and slid down the musty wall, ending up in a pathetic heap in the corner of the room.
Slater ripped the P-64 sidearm out of his grip and hurled it across the room.
‘What were you thinking, kid?’ he said.
Samuel winced in pain as the secondary effects of the knee began to take hold. Slater knew exactly what the guy was going through. The searing pain would work its way up his mid-section, agonising enough to teach him a lesson. However, Slater had thrown the strike with enough restraint to ensure he didn’t cause any damage that wouldn’t fade in minutes. He easily could have broken ribs or torn muscles against such a vulnerable opponent.