by Matt Rogers
Neak made to retort, then considered who he was speaking to and shrugged, conceding the point. ‘You’re probably right.’
‘So you will deliver it as promised?’
‘Of course. And the price?’
‘Like I said. We’ve agreed to your terms.’
‘Then that makes us all very happy campers.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s a turn of phrase. We’ll be there in three weeks. Need to lay low for a while.’
‘Do you need any help with that?’
‘My brother’s taking care of it.’
‘Then we will see you when you get here.’
The price, Neak thought, struggling to contain his excitement. The fucking price.
They’ve agreed to our terms.
Before he could say anything he regretted, he ended the call and slotted the phone back into his pocket.
His ears still rang from the hail of gunfire he and his men had just unloaded on these unsuspecting civilians just trying to earn their keep, but sound was starting to return.
In fact — an absence of sound.
Randall Neak stood motionless at the feet of a massacre, and felt…
…nothing.
It was all too quiet. The five of them stood perched at the head of a murderous trail they’d carved across Africa. It was the only way they’d determined they could succeed. A blaze of death, unleashed from the moment they snatched the briefcase out of the dying intelligence official’s hands to the moment they commandeered a civilian fishing boat at this harbour.
They were in the home stretch.
And none of it felt real in the slightest.
Already a sociopath, and completely aware of the fact, Neak knew he’d had to compartmentalise on a level he’d never experienced over the course of the last few days. Nothing could slow them down, and everyone who had tried had quickly met their demise, from border guards to unscrupulous bandits to ordinary civilians simply getting in their way.
Like this particular incident.
They would have wasted valuable minutes subduing the fishermen, tying them up and securing them, and that in itself would have risked compromise. It wouldn’t have taken much for one of the men to slip out of his restraints and raise the alarm, and then whoever the hell was pursuing them would be able to triangulate their position effortlessly.
No.
Death was the only way.
And soon it would come to an end.
Neak took the chance to pause for a beat. To compose himself. To prepare himself for the final stretch — an interception of an ocean freighter out in open waters.
Easy.
Compared to what they’d already been through.
They’d killed dozens of people to get to where they were now, and they weren’t about to stop.
As Neak surged forward and leapt aboard the fishing trawler, one of his men hurled the final rope back toward the harbour and the boat began to twist out to face the horizon. Vince — a twenty-something hothead with undeniable talent and a psychopathic streak, which made him the perfect candidate for Special Forces — turned to face his boss.
‘Price?’ the man muttered.
‘What we agreed on,’ Neak said.
Vince let out a low whistle. ‘We’re rich, Randall. We’re fucking rich.’
If the deal was honoured, then Neak and his friends were now worth two hundred million U.S. dollars.
The fishing trawler surged out of harbour, regaining the momentum they’d maintained all the way across Africa, and Randall Neak took a deep breath, inhaling the salty air.
He tasted money.
He tasted freedom.
12
Halfway through the moaning corridors, Xu quickly realised that he’d never experienced a true storm before.
The freighter was enormous, a literal island built to handle the roughest of seas. But the ferocity with which the never-ending waves battered the hull sent screeching tremors through the structure itself, warping the walls, turning the entire vessel into an eerie choir of the damned.
Xu had seen more violent combat than all but the most battle-hardened veterans, and considered himself virtually immune to mortal fear, but this tested his mettle.
He seized the catwalk’s railing with white knuckles, wiping cold sweat off his brow. He couldn’t have imagined simply pursuing a man through a ship could prove as difficult as this, but everyone on board this ship was well accustomed to the high seas. When the freighter’s bow dropped forward as it crested a wave, groaning and tilting like a rubber duck in a bathtub splashed around by a toddler, Xu was convinced they were about to capsize. He stared above his head and figured he would drop three or four storeys if that happened — the catwalk outside his living quarters stared out over a massive emporium-like space that covered a vast portion of the interior.
He wouldn’t survive if the entire freighter rolled over.
But it didn’t, because it was built to withstand these conditions.
It was one hell of a journey, though.
Stomaching a wave of nausea, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other as the reality of the situation set in. The captain knew there was an imposter onboard the ship, and if the crew’s knowledge of the incident was anything to go off, he was just as involved as Jimmy Neak had been. It seemed they were co-conspirators.
Xu needed to move.
Right goddamn now.
‘What kind of career did I choose?’ he muttered to himself as the same feeling of weightlessness came over him. The freighter had crested the top of an enormous wave, and would soon plummet into the bottom of the next…
Jolt.
Xu’s bones shuddered as the freighter bombarded the next wave. Over and over and over again, he went through the same sensations. After five or six of the jarring impacts, the pattern became less foreign. He could time his movements, hurry through the ship more efficiently.
Which was more than necessary, considering the captain had stormed off over five minutes ago.
By now, he could be armed.
Xu would just have to deal with the situation as it unfolded.
He powered up a claustrophobic stairwell with weak flickering lighting, now sweating freely despite the chill. Staying on his feet proved no easy feat in these conditions, and Xu clambered up to where he presumed the captain’s quarters lay with his stomach in his throat and a mask of sweat covering his face.
You’re not ready for this, a voice told him. You’re about to vomit.
He ignored it.
Focus on the captain. Nothing else matters.
For a moment the horrific battering of the waves ceased, and an uneasy quiet settled over Xu’s surroundings. He burst out into a narrow white corridor with barely enough space for two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.
He spotted a door swinging on its hinges in the distance, and his focus narrowed to a tunnel.
There.
No. Not there.
Here.
A grave, unforgivable error. At the same moment he realised the door was swinging due to the natural momentum of the freighter, Xu sensed movement directly beside him. The captain had been lying in wait, paranoid as all hell, and for good reason. Black Force had recruited Xu for his reflexes, but not even his inconceivable reaction speed could save him this time.
Three hundred pounds of deadweight came down on his back. The captain attached himself to Xu like a leech, wrapping both his beefy arms over Xu’s shoulders. One of the enormous slabs of muscle and fat constricted tight around Xu’s throat. He made all the right moves, dropping his chin to his chest to try and prevent the captain from crushing his windpipe, but the big man must have had some kind of training in unarmed combat. Xu bucked violently to try and throw the enormous man off his back, but the captain twisted with it, utilising momentum the way only a collegiate wrestler would know how.
With three hundred pounds bearing down on him, physics took care of the rest.
The captain included.
The giant man rolled off Xu, and he took full advantage of the confusion. With the knowledge in the back of his head that the captain would have battered him to a bloody pulp if the circumstances hadn’t changed, he burst to his feet and launched a scything kick into the captain’s gut with lethal intentions. The sole of his boot crunched into soft flesh, and the big man winced.
Good sign for me.
Bad sign for you.
Any display of weakness reversed momentum in a fight. It was a simple law of human nature. Xu spotted the captain doubling over, his face contorting in pain as the kick resonated through his intestines, and his own adrenalin levels spiked. Energy surged through him, screaming at him to capitalise on the shifting tides.
And he did.
He launched into the captain and head-butted the guy in the jaw, slamming his forehead into the man’s chin with pinpoint accuracy. He might have broken his jaw with the initial blow, but he made sure to add insult to injury by whipping his head back and twisting on the spot with a sinister elbow, smashing the captain’s head off the centre line with the sideswiping strike.
Teeth flew.
Blood sprayed.
The captain — all three hundred pounds of him — pitched to the left, beginning to topple in much the same way that the ship did, just on a considerably smaller scale.
Xu made space, stepping back slightly to let the man crumble.
Instead, the captain found his footing at the last second and darted through an open doorway leading to a room draped in shadow.
He came back out two seconds later with a shotgun in his hands.
13
Xu didn’t panic.
The shotgun was ancient, an outdated relic from a bygone era, more of a complimentary gesture than an actual attempt to arm the captain with some serious firepower. Xu couldn’t imagine the weapon had been used in years, if at all, and sure enough the captain took a precious second to wiggle his fat finger inside the trigger guard, searching for the tiny piece of gunmetal that would send a cluster of pellets through Xu’s stomach.
He couldn’t find it in time.
Shame, Xu thought.
He darted out of the way of the two gigantic barrels with the poise of a gymnast, and followed the manoeuvre up with one of the hardest kicks he’d ever had the pleasure of throwing. With zero inhibition as to how much damage he would cause, he twisted at the hips and lashed out with enough fight-or-flight chemicals flooding through his brain to add the strength of ten men to his actions. When his shinbone — hardened by a decade of relentless Muay Thai training — slammed home against the captain’s obliques, Xu felt muscle tissue tear and ribs break under the savage blow.
This time, the captain didn’t just wince.
He dropped the shotgun, went down on both knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and folded at the waist.
Like he was lining himself up for a follow-up kick on purpose.
Xu swung his foot back and loaded up, then unleashed like a kicker punting a football the entire length of the field. He hit the captain in the soft flesh above his ear, using the same foot. The captain’s giant head ricocheted like a bowling ball into the side of the steel doorframe, and he slumped over the threshold and lay completely still.
Xu didn’t need to check his pulse to understand the man was dead.
He would never grow accustomed to the amount of power he could generate when his life was on the line. It was a unique sensation, and he’d never been able to replicate it in sparring or regular training. It only came about when Xu knew that whoever gained the upper hand would survive the encounter. He’d used it many times before, and it was never any less fearsome each time.
He reached down and gathered up two handfuls of the captain’s giant waterproof coat. He dragged the man over the threshold, depositing his body in the tiny windowless room he’d fetched the shotgun from. It was a meagre storage space, noncommittal to any specific purpose, just a rectangular box to dump spare supplies and unused goods. Xu eyed mounds of cardboard boxes, the remains of half-eaten pre-packaged meals, worn equipment, and spare high-visibility vests.
He’d seen enough.
There was nothing of note.
He stepped over the giant man’s corpse and shut the door behind him, keeping that particular revelation out of sight for the time being. The ramifications would present themselves later. By killing the most important man aboard, he’d put himself on a collision course with the rest of the crew. But he had little other choice, and by now he knew what was on the way.
Randall Neak.
There was no other possibility. The fact that the laptop’s security measures had been disabled, coupled with the absence of the JSOC corpses, said everything that needed to be said. Jimmy Neak would have been onboard to welcome his brother, intercepting them deep in the anonymity of open waters.
And it was still going ahead, it seemed.
The crew might not know why, but they would follow the orders handed down to them.
Xu made his way gingerly back to the deck that housed his living quarters, rocking and swaying with the natural motion of the ship, wondering if he was making the right decision in leaving the shotgun with the captain’s corpse. He’d identified it as an old-school Remington 870, which was too bulky to hide under his clothing as he traversed the tilting corridors of the freighter. If he ran into any of the crew members on the way back to his room, his cover would disintegrate.
And so far, he was — barely — holding the situation together.
As soon as someone discovered the captain’s demise, all hell would break loose.
Until then…
Xu almost made it back to his room. He scurried along the metal catwalk, passing closed door after closed door. The weight of the come down draped over him — with the adrenalin dissipating, his mental fire burned out and his body transitioned into recovery mode. Right now, he couldn’t put up much of a fight even if he tried. The two blows that had murdered the captain had sapped the strength out of his bones.
So when one of the steel doors to the other living quarters flew open alongside him and a burly, fat-fingered hand shot out of the darkness and snatched hold of his collar, he could do nothing but brace himself for what followed. As he turned his head to get a look at his attacker the ship smashed into another wave, and all his surroundings shuddered. His vision blurred.
Already in the process of turning his head, Xu’s chin whiplashed against his upper chest, rattling some of his teeth in his gums. He grimaced, reached up to try and swat away the giant hand, but the grip tightened and the arm tugged violently and Xu stumbled off-balance into the dark room.
14
If Xu thought his own cabin stank of sweat, it paled in comparison to this den.
He recognised the big Russian from the mess as soon as the guy yanked him over the threshold. Up close the brute was a bundle of fast-twitch muscle fibres, far stronger than Xu could have ever imagined. Even if he’d been operating at full capacity, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to overpower the man. The Russian hurled him across the room with one hand, using the other to slam the door shut behind him. He threw Xu down on the thin grimy mattress.
Xu didn’t waste any time. He was in a disadvantageous position. If the Russian wanted, he could fetch a gun and blow Xu’s brains out before he scrambled off the mattress.
That wouldn’t cut it.
Xu burst off the bed and loaded up with a thunderous left hook to the body. If he landed it correctly, his knuckles would crush muscle tissue in the side of the Russian’s torso and drop him where he stood. Best case scenario — Xu would hit the liver. He figured that would put th
e guy out of commission for at least an hour.
No other options.
He let loose with the punch.
It whistled through thin air. The giant Russian simply wasn’t there anymore. Xu lurched forward, off-balance from swinging at nothing but empty space, and the next thing he knew two powerful hands had latched onto his shoulders from behind and threw him straight back on the mattress.
He landed on his neck, entangling himself in a mass of sweaty bedsheets. Stifling a dry heave, he tried to roll to his feet.
The Russian punched him square in the chest.
Xu hadn’t experienced technique like that in quite some time. He collapsed against the far wall, slumped across the cheap mattress, his chest rising and falling as he gasped for air.
Completely winded.
The guy hit like a truck.
‘Okay,’ Xu muttered. ‘You win.’
‘I know,’ the big man muttered.
There were no weapons in sight — at least, none that Xu could see. At any moment the Russian could wrench out a switchblade from the inside sleeve of his shirt, and Xu figured he would be helpless to prevent the man stabbing him to death in a heartbeat. He had been overpowered effortlessly.
Switchblade.
Keeping his movements imperceptible, he reached a hand back and felt for the hilt of the knife he’d used to murder Jimmy Neak. He found nothing. It had dislodged in the brawl with the captain, and was probably wedged into a crack in the floor of the upper deck. He was unarmed.
All the fight sapped from him, he sucked lungfuls of rancid air in through his lips and waited for the interrogation that was sure to follow.
The Russian fetched a fold-out chair from the opposite wall, opened it up, dumped it down in the centre of the claustrophobic room, and sat his enormous frame down.
Face to face with Xu.
‘We did not introduce,’ the man said, his voice low and menacing in the lowlight. ‘I am Gennady.’
‘Jimmy Neak.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘I know you are not,’ the Russian said.