Hunted: A Jason King Thriller (Jason King Series Book 6)

by Matt Rogers

  Out of the fragments, one of the off-road buggies they had glimpsed on their way up to Abdullah’s penthouse came roaring out of the building. Its tyres launched into thin air. The vehicle — which seemed to contain two occupants, both of their features blurry from this distance — went airborne for a long couple of seconds before slamming onto the roof of the mall and disappearing from sight.

  Isla heard the distant screaming of a turbo-charged engine, whining across the roof of the complex across the lot.

  She exchanged a worried look with Klara.

  ‘That seems like something King would do,’ she said as the breath caught in her throat.

  35

  Inside the vast parking garage, King slammed the three-piece seatbelt into place and tightened it hard over his chest. Operating with one good hand, he fired up the buggy and switched the gearstick into “drive.”

  In the passenger seat, Slater fumbled with his own seatbelt — more of a safety harness than anything else.

  ‘You ready for this?’ King said.

  ‘No. We don’t have any other choice, though, do we?’

  King shook his head. ‘Here we go.’

  He applied as much pressure to the accelerator pedal as humanly possible and felt his stomach slam against the back of his ribcage as the Polaris X Edition tore toward the opposite window — and the empty space beyond.

  ‘Shit,’ Slater cursed, struggling to keep his nerves in check.

  In his peripheral vision, King saw the elevator doors slide open once again, delivering another cluster of combatants into the garage. They had acted just in time. Another firefight would have almost certainly left them in bodybags.

  Still accelerating, he saw Slater swing the Glock around to fend off the new wave of militants temporarily. He squeezed off three shots, stalling the approaching force.

  King let his concentration focus entirely on the sheet of reinforced glass ahead, likely constructed to withstand a sizeable amount of force.

  He had to hit the window hard to ensure they broke through.

  ‘This might hurt,’ he muttered, ignoring the nauseating pain in his left arm.

  He pinned the broken wrist to his chest in an attempt to stabilise it. It would likely prove futile, but he had to try something.

  The hood of the Polaris crashed against the floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass, vibrating the vehicle’s entire frame. King clenched his teeth and locked his jaw, riding out the wave of blunt force trauma. With an almighty shattering noise the buggy broke through, demolishing the window with a single blow.

  The open frame lent no protection from the elements.

  Hot wind blasted through the buggy’s cabin, making them squint. King felt his stomach drop into his feet and looked out to see the rooftop rushing up to meet them. There was nothing he could do to control their trajectory. If they pitched too far forward, the vehicle would plunge nose-first into the hard surface and they would be crushed to death inside the steel frame.

  Thankfully, it stayed relatively level.

  The front tyres smashed against the rooftop first, jarringly powerful in their impact. King felt his brain rattle inside his skull. He kept his head pinned against the back of the seat to minimise the concussive force. Slater rocked violently in the seat beside him, equally brutalised by the landing.

  The buggies were well-constructed and shock-resistant, but they weren’t designed to fall twenty feet through thin air.

  Next, the rear wheels came down, hitting the rooftop with similar force. The buggy careered forward and King kept his foot planted on the gas pedal, continuing their momentum.

  From the rectangular hole in the side of the building behind them, rifle fire cracked. King heard bullets punch through the roof on either side of them, sinking into the thick concrete. King wrenched the wheel from side-to-side, only able to use a single hand to do so. He kept the other locked into his lap, not daring to move his damaged wrist an inch more than he needed to.

  He skirted around ventilation shafts and towering glass domes, which were seemingly dotted across the roof of the complex at random.

  Beside him, Slater spun and threw a glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ he yelled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘These guys must be getting paid well. They’re following.’

  Bewildered, King looked behind them to see three identical buggies career out the open window frame in the distance, headlights glaring and engines roaring. They crashed down onto the roof — exactly how King had done moments previously — and surged towards them.

  ‘They’re copying,’ King said. ‘We proved it was survivable.’

  ‘Did you think it was before we tried it?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. We could have gone straight through the roof into the mall below. That would have killed us.’

  Slater looked down at the ground flashing past, just beneath them. ‘This place is sturdy. What the hell do we do now?’

  ‘We keep driving.’

  ‘To where? There’s no way off the roof.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ King muttered, inhaling burning rubber as he slid the buggy around a steaming ventilation shaft. Its tyres screeched as he completed the move.

  ‘They’re faster than us,’ Slater said, still staring out the rear of the open frame.

  King grimaced as he studied the rear view mirror to see two of the buggies gaining on them, circumnavigating the uncharted terrain at a quicker pace than King.

  Ahead, the roof was almost entirely blocked off by the largest glass dome King had seen so far. The colossal structure was tiered as it rose out of the rooftop, meeting at a point far above them. It stretched at least a hundred feet across the roof. He peered through the translucent glass to see a darkened atrium sprawling out below them, four levels tall with an enormous food court at the very bottom of the mall. The tiered floors ran around the perimeter of the atrium in circular fashion, like an enormous viewing arena. It reminded King of Mikhailov’s mine in the Russian Far East.

  He cursed as he realised they were making a beeline for the nearest sheet of glass.

  He slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel, screeching the buggy to a halt just a few dozen feet away from the dome. The path around the structure was too narrow — they wouldn’t fit.

  There was nowhere left to run.

  They couldn’t go through the glass. It was at least a hundred feet to the ground floor, a distance not even remotely survivable.

  King turned his neck fast enough to receive whiplash as he heard the approaching roar of another buggy’s engine.

  An identical Polaris X Edition screamed into view, careering around the same ventilation shaft King had dodged just before. Its occupants noticed the glass dome in unison.

  With his good hand, King reached down and grabbed the Desert Eagle Mark XIX out of the footwell. By some miracle, it hadn’t fallen out during their escapade. He raised the sights and fired off three shots at the approaching vehicle, compensating for the fact that his aim would be affected by his pain.

  One of them slammed home, spearing the driver through the chest.

  The approaching buggy accelerated even faster.

  ‘Move!’ Slater roared.

  King realised that in his death throes, the driver had spasmed against the accelerator, depressing it even further. The only available option was to reverse and switch gear. He dropped the Desert Eagle back onto the steel between his feet and reversed hard.

  The buggy’s tyres squealed.

  The other Polaris approached fast.

  If they collided, both vehicles would be taken through the glass beside them. It would be a short fall to their deaths.

  The massive tyres underneath his own vehicle found purchase on the concrete and shot backwards, away from the approaching battering ram.

  King caught a flashing glimpse of the enemy vehicle’s passenger, wide-eyed and silent as he realised what was about to occur.

  The enemy buggy c
rashed straight through the nearest sheet of glass at fifty miles per hour, roaring out into open space. The entire dome splintered and shattered, creating a cascading cloud of glass shards. Its nose dipped toward the ground floor of the mall far below and the vehicle plunged into darkness.

  A couple of seconds later, King heard the steel of their crash-frame twisting and groaning as the buggy hit the food court.

  The shattering of the dome left a staggering hole in the roof of the mall, like a great valley carved out of the concrete.

  King and Slater rested on the very edge of the canyon, staring down at the multitude of levels below them.

  ‘There’s more,’ Slater muttered, staring at the approaching convoy of vehicles. Far in the distance, even more of the Polaris buggies launched out of Abdullah’s building — at least a dozen in total.

  They were fighting a losing battle.

  They would soon be completely overwhelmed.

  To escape, they would have to take the risks that Abdullah’s men were unwilling to imitate.

  King glanced down at the ornate railings running around the perimeter of the atrium, all lined up perfectly with the circular lip of the rooftop. The fourth level of the mall was the closest to them, but almost all of its surface area rested directly underneath the roof itself.

  He would have to approach the drop at an angle, launching for the very edge of the railing in one corner of the circle.

  Slater followed his gaze down into the mall. ‘No…’

  ‘What other options do we have? You said it yourself.’

  ‘That’s too far.’

  ‘Exactly. They won’t follow.’

  With the drone of approaching buggies filling his ears, King switched the Polaris back into “drive” and launched off the mark. He kept the buggy roaring in a tight curve around the lip of the rooftop, only a couple of feet from empty space. He followed the curvature of the circular atrium.

  When he’d built up enough speed, he twisted the wheel and dropped inside the mall.

  Into thin air.

  36

  The angle was flawless.

  It would come down to whether they had enough momentum to carry the buggy onto the fourth floor.

  King felt the strange sensation take hold as the buggy dropped, wrenched down by gravity. The vehicle would have fallen away from him if not for the safety harness, which tugged them down, pinning them to their seats.

  They passed over the narrow sliver of open air and ducked underneath the lip of the rooftop, narrowly falling into the upper level of the mall. King breathed a sigh of relief just before they impacted.

  Then he realised their troubles had only just begun.

  They’d survived the fall, but the resulting landing shook his bones in their sockets.

  He slammed forward against the harness. The leather bit across his collar bone, threatening to snap it. He grimaced and let out a grunt of pain as the buggy smashed through the thin railing, landing on the shiny linoleum floor of the mall’s top level. Slater received similar treatment, struggling to keep pressure on his injured arm while the buggy’s suspension groaned and threw them around the interior.

  King shoved both feet against the brake, trying desperately to slow the vehicle before it skidded off the edge of the drop. The tyres squealed against the slippery floor, unable to find purchase. The true horror of not being in control of the vehicle took hold. He wrenched the wheel left and right with his good hand, trying over and over again to correct course.

  Finally, the buggy swerved one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and jolted still, able to bite into the floor with enough traction to slow to a halt. He lashed back against his seat as the momentum halted, sending another wave of agony through his wrist. He was sweating uncontrollably now, overwhelmed by everything that had unfolded.

  He struggled to focus on his surroundings. They had come to a stop at the very edge of the atrium itself, looking out over the railings opposite and the food court far below. King glimpsed the buggy that had made the fall, twisted beyond recognition, surrounded by the debris of the tables it had crushed.

  There was no chance that its occupants had survived.

  In the distance, an alarm resonated through the mall, shrieking and echoing off the towering walls.

  Over the shrilling of the alarm, King heard engines above them. He looked up to see three buggies perched on the edge of the drop, their hoods and front tyres visible below the night sky.

  King made eye contact with one of the drivers. The guy sized up the situation, then slammed his vehicle into reverse and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Retreating?’ Slater said.

  King went pale. ‘No. The opposite.’

  ‘Oh, fuck.’

  King fumbled for the gearstick, aware that if he didn’t slam the buggy into reverse, the next vehicle to attempt the jump would come down right on top of them. They had screeched to a halt right underneath the landing area, given the trajectory of the jump and the horsepower of the Polaris X Editions.

  He found the reverse gear just as one of the buggies rocketed off the ledge above them.

  King swore and stamped at the pedal.

  He missed.

  He tried again.

  His foot squashed the accelerator to the floor, but there was the inevitable half-second delay.

  The underside of the falling buggy filled his vision, swallowing up their view of the mall. Slater let out a yell of surprise and ripped his seatbelt buckle off, tipping sideways out of the cabin.

  King followed suit.

  He struggled with the release mechanism, finding it after a half-second of searching. As the harness clicked open, he dove out of the open frame with milliseconds to spare.

  Steel crushed beside him as the cabin caved in, taking on the full weight of the enemy buggy coming down right on top of it.

  Their own buggy had been in the process of reversing, so the falling Polaris crushed the front half to a pulp. As a result, its nose lifted into the air. King’s vehicle had created a makeshift ramp that changed the momentum of the landing.

  King recognised the opportunity to act just as he rolled away from the wreckage.

  The enemy buggy teetered precariously close to the edge of the atrium. Its nose and front tyres were pointed at a forty-five degree angle toward the ceiling, resting on the hood of King’s vehicle.

  It wouldn’t take much more force…

  King scrambled to his feet and sprinted over to the buggy. The two passengers had been rattled by the landing — just as King and Slater had. They were in the process of reaching for weapons, but they wouldn’t get to them in time.

  King would act first.

  With his uninjured hand he grabbed hold of one of the steel supports on the underside of the Polaris. He planted his feet into the linoleum floor and activated his muscles, heaving with all his might. Years of deadlifting and squatting hundreds upon hundreds of pounds paid off, pushing kinetic energy into the teetering buggy.

  The buggy reached a ninety degree angle, standing on its rear end, pointing straight up at the mall’s roof. King heaved and strained and squirmed, searching for that additional burst of momentum.

  Then Slater came sprinting in from the other side and shouldered the underside of the vehicle, toppling it with a final push.

  It fell back end-over-end and plummeted off the edge of the balcony, spiralling to the atrium far below.

  As soon as the buggy was out of the equation, King immediately checked to see whether anyone else was reckless enough to follow suit. There were a couple of buggies still visible on the edge of the rooftop, but other than that no-one seemed to be launching themselves into open space to try and copy what their comrades had done.

  They had seen the result of such a brash manoeuvre.

  King saw two men duck out of their stationary vehicle and swing bulky assault rifles onto their shoulders. He grabbed Slater by the arm — making sure that it wasn’t the injured one — and hauled him out of sight, sprintin
g down the faintly-lit aisles of the mall.

  The rooftop towered far over their heads. The entire mall had been constructed with decadence in mind to satiate the needs of the hordes of tourists that flocked to landmarks like this. It also meant that a state-of-the-art security system had been installed, evident in the howling sirens that tore through the complex as they ran.

  ‘You think they’ll be trying to find another way in?’ Slater said.

  ‘Maybe,’ King said. ‘I don’t want to get my hopes up, but we may have caught our lucky break.’

  They found the nearest escalator — frozen into place after being shut down for the night — and hurried down the metal steps to the lower levels of the mall. They had no pre-discussed plan or any idea of where to go from here, but reaching the ground floor seemed to be the highest priority.

  Wordlessly, they both recognised that.

  King wondered when this would end. The staggering pain in his wrist had turned him pessimistic, muddling his senses. He couldn’t see a resolution to the conflict. Wherever they turned, they would be hunted.

  Maybe he was destined to live out the rest of his days running and fighting, until finally he succumbed to the relentless pressure.

  It was only a matter of time — especially if he had no time to heal.

  They reached the ground floor unobstructed, their footsteps echoing in the empty mall. King found himself dwarfed by his surroundings, impossibly large like everything else in Dubai. The entire region had the same air of artificiality as the empty mega-project of Dubai South.

  In the end, they were both the same.

  Soulless high-tech cities built out of nothing in the middle of the desert, funded by billions of dollars worth of oil money.

  Abdullah fits right in, King thought.

  They scrutinised maps of the mall’s layout in the lowlight, searching for a way out of the enormous maze. Slater ushered him down a narrow row of high-end fashion outlets, convinced that there was an exit somewhere ahead.

  They rounded a corner and Slater ran directly into a prowling security guard.