by Matt Rogers
The man worked for the mall in some capacity. His baggy short-sleeved dress shirt was tucked into his belt, and he wielded a long black baton like it would do any kind of damage to an intruder. He looked older than most guards, in his late forties with a receding hairline and a plump belly.
Slater dropped low — much like how King had back in the garage — and hurled the man over one hip. A judo-style hip toss with no follow-up blows dealt little damage, which had been Slater’s intention all along. The security guard thumped down onto the linoleum on his back and lay there, stunned and slightly winded.
‘Sorry, brother,’ Slater said, and they continued jogging down the smaller corridor.
Together they burst through a small exit door built into the wall alongside a giant set of rotating doors. The emergency path had been left unlocked by the security guard, who must have been patrolling the exterior of the complex when the alarms were activated.
He would have heard the commotion on the roof, too.
King swept his Desert Eagle over a largely-empty carpark, populated by a handful of vehicles that either belonged to security or had been left there overnight while their owners stayed at neighbouring hotels.
‘You know how to hotwire a car?’ King said.
‘No need,’ Slater replied.
They turned as the throaty chugging of a ten-cylinder engine approached them from the right, accompanied by twin beams of white fluorescent headlights. The orange Lamborghini Huracan was unblemished. It hadn’t been involved in the carnage.
The doors opened simultaneously, sliding up on their tracks as the occupants raised them vertically. Isla and Klara climbed out of the cabin. Klara took two steps forward and threw her arms around King. He shivered in her grasp, suddenly intensely cold.
‘Are you hurt?’ she whispered.
Being honest, he nodded. Adrenalin had held off the shock of re-shattering his wrist, but now the sensation permeated his consciousness, causing his vision to swim and his eyes to water from the pain.
She let him go and grimaced, then turned to Slater. ‘Will, isn’t it?’
‘It sure is,’ he said. ‘Pleasure to finally meet you.’
‘I’m Klara.’
‘I know. King talks about you non-stop.’
King flashed a dark look at Slater and rolled his eyes.
‘Well, I would,’ he defended. ‘We’ve just been a little preoccupied lately.’
‘Let’s get the fuck out of Dubai,’ Isla said, summing up exactly what King had been thinking.
They piled into the Lamborghini. Klara was small enough to perch on the centre console, while King and Slater crushed into the passenger seat, four hundred pounds of beat-up muscle.
‘Where to?’ Isla said as she slipped into the driver’s seat. ‘The airports are off-limits. We could go cross-country. Drive down through Oman.’
King sighed. ‘That sounds like trouble.’
‘I’m lost,’ Isla admitted. ‘I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to be doing. We have nowhere to go. Everyone wants us dead. We’re cut off. If we want a goddamn hope of living some semblance of a normal life, we need to start working on it fast.’
She let loose with her thoughts, finally able to voice what had been building up inside of her. King echoed her sentiments. He didn’t know what on earth they were going to do.
But certain loose ends needed tying up.
‘I think we have an opportunity,’ he said. ‘To eliminate one part of the equation.’
‘And what would that be?’ Isla said.
‘I think Abdullah’s currently shitting his pants. He let us get away. We killed more than ten of his men. He might think we’re coming back for him.’
‘We’re not doing that…’ Klara said, her tone steely. ‘Isla was right. You’re addicted to fighting.’
King shook his head. ‘That’s not my point, or my idea. I think he might call up his Russian friends. They’ll know what to do, and they’re desperate to hunt me down.’
Isla paused. ‘You think they’ll come here? Bring their forces?’
King shrugged. ‘It’s anyone’s guess. But there’s only one place they’d come in from.’
‘Al Maktoum,’ Slater said.
‘Maximum anonymity. Abdullah owns half of Dubai South — it wouldn’t be hard to set up a covert meeting place. I think he’s running scared. I think he knows he’s out of his league and will try to call in the big guns while he knows I’m still in Dubai. If his lead results in my head on the chopping block, he’ll get rewarded. And it’ll make up for failing before.’
Isla shook her head. ‘There’s no guarantee any of that will happen. We’ll be waiting for a miracle.’
Slater piped up. ‘So we facilitate a crisis.’
‘What?’ King said, confused.
‘I still have his number.’
It dawned on them all at once. For the first time in what felt like forever, King smiled with genuine happiness. He had the upper hand, finally, after weeks of back-pedalling.
‘Let’s go find a phone,’ he said.
37
The bank of pay phones rested in a rundown warehouse dock on the outskirts of Dubai. This section of the city had been abandoned long ago. The buildings were rusting and waste blew sporadically across the empty lots. A half-finished construction site was tucked away from passers-by — the remnants of an oil conglomerate that had gone bust.
The Lamborghini pulled into the long concrete dock, its pristine hull juxtaposed against the surrounding desolation. These were the parts of Dubai shielded from the tourists, only accessible to those who wandered off the beaten track.
King slipped out of the spaceship-like interior and strode fast for the bank of phones. They would likely be untraceable — and even if they were, he wouldn’t be in the area for much longer.
He had a call to make.
And a part to play.
He clutched the scrap of paper in his hand that Slater had scrawled a number on — a number that had been painstakingly pried out of corporate personnel who worked for Abdullah’s long list of holding companies. Slater had acquired the man’s personal line back in the Harrier jet, using various methods of persuasion and manipulation to get what he wanted.
He was good at that.
The sea lapped gently at the dock — it was the only audible noise this far into the desert. King found himself awed at the sheer magnitude of what had been abandoned. Dubai was the literal embodiment of striking while the iron was hot. When the obscene funds dried up, industry waned.
He lifted a worn receiver to his ear, surprised that the pay phones still functioned — or why they even existed out here in the first place. Perhaps the slave workers employed by many of Dubai’s biggest corporations had no personal phones with which to contact their employers.
He dialled a number, recognising that it was close to two in the morning and that Abdullah might be asleep.
After a long period of nothing, the man answered.
‘Who is this?’ he said. The stress was evident in his voice. His tone was raw and demanding.
‘Hey, buddy,’ King said, leeching as much superiority into his tone as he could. ‘Turn around.’
He heard a slight gasp of panic from the other end of the line, then silence.
‘Just fucking with you,’ King said. ‘You sound scared.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing from you. Just wanted you to know what’s going to happen to you now.’
‘You’re bluffing.’
‘I was bluffing before. Trying to spare my own life. You should have killed me when you had the chance. Now I have a list of names — and from what little research I’ve done, I realise that you’re in a world of shit.’
Abdullah said nothing.
‘These are powerful men who were watching the live streams,’ King said. ‘Incredibly powerful men. Yourself included. What will the others do when they find out you let me escape?’
Silence.
‘I’ll leak this to the media,’ King said. ‘I’ll tell them that you let me go. Fill the news stories with all kinds of lies. Like how you wanted to oust your powerful friends, so you let me off the leash. You told me to go after them. You wanted them all dead. How would that make them feel?’
‘What do you want?!’ Abdullah screamed, losing his composure. His voice was distorted by the poor audio quality of the call.
‘Like I said, nothing. I just wanted you to be aware of what’s coming. Hopefully that makes you sleep better at night.’
King slammed the phone back into its cradle. Abdullah had been in the middle of a tirade when King had cut him off. He imagined the rage coursing through the man. Abdullah was used to winning, used to asserting control over everything in his reach. That was how these business tycoons operated — they were all-seeing and all-knowing.
Not anymore.
King was almost certain that he would get the visceral reaction he was looking for.
He turned and shoved his hands into his pockets, walking back to the Lamborghini fast. The open passenger door beckoned. He crammed into the narrow space next to Slater and nodded approvingly.
‘I think I did my job well enough,’ he said.
‘You look like shit,’ Isla observed.
King had been trying to ignore his condition, focusing on anything else but the state of his injuries, but sooner or later reality had to be confronted. He sensed the cold sweat across his brow and the swollen, broken mess that was his left hand. He sighed and bowed his head.
‘I need rest,’ he admitted.
‘Me too,’ Slater said.
King flashed a glance at his friend to see a large crimson stain caked across the entire arm of Slater’s long-sleeved shirt. The man had lost a considerable amount of blood.
‘I hear Dubai South has some vacant properties this time of year,’ King said.
Isla smirked. ‘Just my line of thinking.’
She fired up the Lamborghini’s engine and peeled away from the deserted ex-commercial district. The road through the desert was devoid of artificial light, only illuminated by the Huracan’s stark headlights and the full moon overhead. The four of them spent the journey in silence, all looking out through the windshield at the darkened sand dunes on either side of them.
King sensed the unspoken nervousness in the air. The uncertainty that had plagued all of them since getting wrapped up in this chaos had reached a fever pitch. They were relying on the brash actions of an oil tycoon they barely knew in order to try and sort out the situation with the Russians.
And then what? King thought.
Then they would flee the Middle-East and spend the rest of their days stalked by U.S. government forces. King doubted his old employers would rest until they found him.
It was an undeniable mess.
The supercar tore into the outer limits of Dubai South, still shut down for the night. By the time Isla located a half-completed residential sector and pulled into the pitch-black driveway of an unfinished two-storey dwelling, the digital clock on the Huracan’s dashboard had ticked past two in the morning.
‘This will do for now,’ she muttered, staring out at the shoddily-constructed house. Most of the rooms on the second floor were exposed to the hot night-time wind. It seemed like half the house had been constructed, then the rest quickly abandoned.
‘Seems like they gave up on this one,’ King said.
‘This whole project is a mess,’ Isla admitted. ‘The global financial crisis ruined their plans to have most of the work completed this year.’
‘How on earth do you know that?’ Slater said.
‘Up until recently, I worked for a covert section of the government,’ Isla said snarkily. ‘Just in case it slipped your mind. We’ve been keeping tabs on Dubai. There’s ample room for corruption out here.’
‘Tell me about it,’ King said under his breath.
They piled out of the supercar and Isla killed the engine and the headlights simultaneously. The night wrapped around them as they got out into the warm air. She crossed to the front of the Lamborghini and popped the hood, retrieving the emergency first aid kit out of a small compartment near the engine.
‘Looks like you two might need some patching up.’
King stared down at his wrist and stomached a dry heave. In the dark blue light, he couldn’t make out much. Even an outline was enough to turn his insides.
The swollen mess would take months to heal.
Slater nodded at Isla approvingly. ‘Need to get this goddamn bullet out of my shoulder.’
Entering the house was a simple procedure. It merely involved stepping through a section of the drywall that had yet to be built. The four of them spread out across a spacious kitchen devoid of any appliances or furniture.
But it would shield them from the elements — at least for the time being. All they needed was a temporary shelter, which the house provided.
King’s knees faltered as he stepped into the room. It was a strange sensation — one second his legs were working, then they buckled. Klara looped an arm around his waist and steadied him. He knew what it was. A man could only take so much pain before his body refused to continue.
‘You need to lie down,’ she whispered.
‘I know,’ he said softly, and kissed the top of her head.
He was glad to have her here. She was a glimpse of sanity amongst all this preposterousness.
‘You two can cozy up soon,’ Isla said, turning to Klara. ‘I need to get his wrist sorted out.’
38
They set up a temporary shop in one of the empty rooms on the top floor. The house had been constructed with smooth modernity and bland features, which completely destroyed any kind of homeliness the finished product would have.
He realised what he’d like to do with the tens of millions of dollars in his bank account if he ever made it into an uneventful life. He wouldn’t opt for one of the identical, utilitarian penthouses in any of the major cities across the globe. He’d experienced that life, and it wasn’t for him.
He wanted a small place. A place that felt like home, maybe on a beach somewhere. Warm, tropical weather — and peace.
His mind was torn out of the daydream by Isla prodding delicately at his broken wrist.
‘Yeah…’ Isla said in a low tone, studying the grotesque sight. ‘That’s horrific.’
‘You don’t say?’
She smirked, still staring at the grisly swelling, already turning an ugly shade of purple.
‘Going to take some serious recovery time,’ she noted.
‘You know, I might just be a lowly field operative,’ he said. ‘But I could have worked that out for myself.’
‘Take these,’ she said, handing him four tablets from a small pill bottle fetched out of the first aid kit. He swallowed hard, forcing the tablets down his throat without water. The resulting placebo effect calmed him somewhat — he knew the tablets would take some time to act, but the realisation that they were in his system settled his pulse.
‘Well, I’m not a field operative anymore,’ he noted.
Isla shook her head. ‘And you never will be again. We’re all outcasts.’
‘I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. Too much is going on.’
Isla finished fashioning the roll of thick cloth bandage in her hands into a sling, and tentatively bound the broken wrist to King’s chest. He winced at his arm’s every movement, dripping sweat while trying to ride out the discomfort. When the limb was finally secure, Isla sat back against the nearby wall and closed her eyes.
‘I had time to think about it,’ she said. ‘On the carrier. Seven days in a brig with nothing to do. It left a hell of a lot of time for introspection.’
‘How are you dealing with it?’ he said.
‘Not well.’ Her voice had shifted, suddenly raw and honest. It reminded King of the brief hours he’d spent alongside her before his operation in Russia. Her sister had been in danger, a
nd she’d let the emotion slip.
Now, she was doing the same.
‘How long had you spent working for Black Force?’ he said.
‘Just a few years. But my whole life has been spent serving my government — in some capacity. Now they despise me.’
‘You fucked up,’ King admitted. ‘There’s no denying that.’
‘I’m fully aware.’
‘I don’t blame you, though.’
‘Family,’ she said, shaking her head in disbelief — most likely at what she had done. ‘It sure clouds your judgment.’
‘I understand.’
‘You might not hate me for it,’ she said. ‘But the rest of them do. Ramsay was livid. You should have seen him.’
‘Did you know him previously?’
She nodded. ‘He was just as committed to his role as I was. Maybe that’s why I’m finding this so hard to deal with.’
‘Being ex-communicated?’
‘Yeah. My old life’s over. I don’t have anything apart from work. No friends, no family.’
‘Was it just your sister?’
She grimaced. ‘Sarah was my only friend. I confided in her. Maybe that’s why I made such a stupid decision.’
‘It wasn’t stupid.’
‘It ruined everything.’
‘If trying to save a loved one gets you banished from our home country, then I don’t want to work for them,’ King said.
‘Neither do I,’ Isla said. ‘I just … I feel lost.’
‘Me too, Isla,’ he said. ‘Me too.’
‘You have Klara. You have Will. You have your dad.’
‘You have those people too.’
‘It’s not the same. I just bossed you two around. What do I do when you go off and live your own lives?’
‘You start a new one. Away from Black Force, away from work, away from the past. It can be done.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Trust me, it can. I did it. When I retired months ago, I hadn’t known anything except special operations. I got acclimatised. It’s possible.’
‘Yeah … and look how well that worked out for you.’