by Matt Rogers
Not good.
Not good at all.
The agony seared through him, only noticeable a couple of seconds after the blow had landed. He pulled back on the fourth elbow, opening himself up for another attack.
Here we go.
The big man made full use of his opportunity. He headbutted Rollins square in the face, a horrendously effective technique, stunning him into another beat of hesitation. Then the man thundered a punch into Rollins’ jaw, coming awfully close to dislocating it. The pain associated with that kind of injury would have debilitated him, so as Rollins bucked his hips and threw the guy off him, he spent a moment intensely grateful that the punch hadn’t landed correctly.
Nevertheless, he was in bad shape.
The big guy had overcompensated on the punch, and Rollins had taken full advantage of it. The mercenary went sprawling over the top of Rollins, allowing him to burst back to his feet.
Standing up, the odds were even.
Which — largely due to Rollins’ reaction speed — actually put them in his favour.
Briefly, he wondered whether the man had collegiate wrestling experience. The big guy had distributed his weight correctly — if he had no training at all, Rollins could have levered him away in a heartbeat. But the man had landed the punch to the stomach, and the headbutt, and the punch to the jaw.
All of which had hurt like hell.
None of which would reveal themselves in all their consequences until the adrenalin wore off.
Rollins simply had no idea. His stomach lining could be torn, or his ribs could be broken, or maybe his jaw had in fact been dislocated — none of it would hammer home until the dust settled.
Right now, he was roaring with adrenalin, the chemical cocktail of fight-or-flight flooding his system.
And he never chose flight.
21
Even though the pair of them had made it to their feet, neither could afford the pause that came with squaring off across the hallway. There were weapons around them somewhere — dropped rifles and semi-automatic pistols resting in holsters — but neither had time to scour the floor and ascertain where the nearest lethal object rested. Both of them were fully concentrated on each other.
As they should be.
As soon as Rollins worked his hips and got his feet underneath him, he rotated and charged, taking bounding steps across the hallway toward the point in his peripheral vision where he’d spotted the adversary.
The guy had made it too his feet too.
Half a second slower than Rollins had.
That’s all it takes.
Mixed martial arts, at its fundamental core, consisted of a mixture of effective striking and grappling. A man could train for ten years in a certain discipline of striking, such as Muay Thai or kickboxing, but it meant nothing if an All-American wrestler with decent jiu-jitsu skills could charge in, take them down, and batter them on the ground.
Rollins had spent ten years honing himself into a complete mixed martial artist, concentrating on the elements most effective in a live situation without rules or restraints.
When the playing field became level, it was something to behold.
He charged in and slammed his shoulder into the guy’s mid-section, pinning him against the wall behind him. The man bucked and weaved, but it was useless. Rollins used two hundred pounds of his own bodyweight to simply heave the guy off his feet, wrapping both arms around the man’s lower thighs and elevating him off the ground, completing the double-leg takedown.
Wrestling.
He slammed him hard on the marble floor, dealing as much damage as he could muster with a single drop, putting him down on the back of his neck, piledriving all his extra bodyweight on top of the guy. When the man panicked — hurt by the impact — and rolled over onto his stomach in an attempt to scramble to his feet, Rollins looped both legs around the guy’s mid-section and latched onto him like a human backpack. The man panicked harder, reaching desperately over his shoulders in a pitiful attempt to snatch at Rollins.
Rollins looped an arm around his neck and wrenched the choke tight.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
A well-trained man in his athletic prime fuelled by the intense haze of adrenalin and testosterone could choke an adversary unconscious in seconds. It didn’t take much, and Rollins was suitably angry, and the choke was locked in as deep as possible.
The guy gasped and spluttered and even managed to make it halfway to his feet before the blood supply to his brain got cut off and he slumped like a rag doll to the floor in a semi-conscious state.
As soon as the guy went limp, Rollins let go of the choke and thundered a right hook into the side of the man’s head, making sure he didn’t wake up in a hurry.
Boxing.
And that was mixed martial arts, on full display.
Rollins leapt off the body and fetched his HK416 rifle off the marble floor. It had spun away only a few feet when the man had tackled him, but that was all it took to change the carnage to something far more primal. An exchange of gunfire had something artificial about it, something that signified a lack of true competition. In the brief moments Rollins had spent fighting for his life with his bare hands, he’d learned more about himself than he had during the whole rest of his life.
It taught you many things.
Where your limits were.
How far you were prepared to go to survive.
Panting, out of breath, deeply unsettled by how close he’d come to death, he checked the HK416 was ready to fire before he proceeded through the villa. He couldn’t imagine running into much more resistance — if there were more hostiles in the house, they would have capitalised on the time he’d spent brawling with the last man.
No, Rollins could sense it in the air.
This was it.
He was alone with Xiao in the enormous villa.
He’d killed five men.
Four, a voice whispered.
‘Of course,’ he muttered to himself.
He twisted on the spot and fired an unsuppressed round through the back of the unconscious mercenary’s head. Not a shred of guilt passed through his mind. He’d seen the look in the man’s eyes when the guy had been on top of him. The mercenary had been ready to take Rollins’ life. Slowly. Painfully. After all, Rollins had killed his friends.
Should have thought of that before you got into bed with the wrong people, Rollins thought.
It briefly crossed his mind that there was the slightest possibility he’d made a monumental mistake. What if, by sheer coincidence, one of these villas was also protected by a convoy of British ex-military thugs with happy trigger fingers and aggressive tendencies?
Unlikely, Rollins thought.
But possible.
Money made people paranoid, after all.
He wasn’t sure why he was thinking that way. He never had before. Probably because of the attempt to transition to some semblance of ordinary civilian life. It was making him hesitate, second-guessing his own actions.
He knew he could never allow himself to hesitate again.
Then he heard it. The rapid chain of footsteps, directly above his head. He could sense the panic in the strides from his position in the entranceway, and a wry smile crept across his lips.
‘That sounds like you, Xiao,’ he muttered under his breath.
He moved to intercept the trajectory, running silently across the marble floor of the hallway and mounting the grand staircase set against the far wall. He took the stairs three at a time, hunching over, his hands gripping the HK416 like his life depended on it.
He wouldn’t lose the weapon again.
He was sure of it.
The pain of the three blows hadn’t kicked in yet, and he began to wonder whether they’d done any damage at all. As soon as he focused on the possibility, though, pain seared through him. He grimaced and stifled it, locking onto the footsteps above his head with a primal level of intensity.
He used every trick in the book — for all its cheesines
s, visualisation had proven one of the most effective techniques in getting through an operation that he’d ever come across. He ordered himself to proceed, hammering home the self-talk, convincing himself he was unstoppable, invincible, unconquerable.
It worked.
He stayed alert and functioning for another minute or so, which was all it took.
He reached the top of the staircase and circled around a broad balustrade, entering an open stretch of plush carpet overlooking the entranceway on the ground floor.
He ran straight into a pair of sprinting men.
The first was undoubtedly Xiao. He proved to be smaller than Rollins had imagined, barely five-foot-five with a thin frail build and a weathered, hollow face. He looked Chinese, but Rollins couldn’t know for sure. The man was unarmed.
Rollins immediately turned his attention to the other guy — another big, bulky carbon-copy of his mercenary buddies with a shaved head and a permanent scowl.
The guy spotted him.
Rollins emptied half the magazine into him.
Xiao screamed, following the pitiful outcry with an incoherent string of Chinese babbling. Rollins barely hesitated. He strode straight past the bloodied, disfigured corpse of Xiao’s personal bodyguard and wrapped one hand around the man’s collar, forcefully dragging him over the carpet. The man twisted his face into a contorted mess and slapped uselessly at Rollins’ giant forearm.
Rollins dragged him into the nearest room branching off from the corridor — a beautifully decorated, expensively furnished study with a broad leather desk and a pair of armchairs that looked like they cost tens of thousands of dollars each. He dumped Xiao in one of the armchairs and stood over him.
‘English?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ the man spluttered. ‘Oh God, yes. Thank you. Now we can talk like civilised men.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Rollins said.
‘Who do you work for?’
‘Myself.’
‘What?’
‘Law of unintended consequences,’ Rollins said. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t gotten so greedy, you could have enjoyed a peaceful retirement. Shit happens.’
22
They sat across from each other, Rollins resting the vertical foregrip of the HK416 on his lower thigh, keeping the barrel aimed rigidly at Xiao’s unprotected face. The elderly man looked like a child in the giant armchair, especially considering how drastically he’d shrunk away from the threat of the automatic weapon.
Rollins, surprisingly, hadn’t elected to shoot him down where he stood.
That had always been the plan. He’d never intended to linger, especially considering he was acting of his own accord. If he got himself arrested in the act of decimating a private army, there would be no easy explanation for what had happened. He would end up in a prison cell for the rest of his life, something he thought he’d seen the last of after a horrendously botched operation in Peru.
No, he would be clinical, and he would be ruthless, and then he would leave.
Carrying on with his life.
But that wasn’t what had happened. He found himself unwilling to pull the trigger at the final hurdle, and he needed to understand why.
This man sitting across from him was an irreconcilable piece of shit. There was no other definition that would suit. Pathetic and whimpering in the face of his own mortality, he had no problem ordering the gruesome deaths of others. All in the name of profit.
Rollins couldn’t understand it.
He never would.
But he needed to know if this kind of sickness in the world was enough to warrant devoting himself to Black Force again.
‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ Rollins said, choosing his words carefully.
‘I know,’ Xiao said, even though he hadn’t a clue.
Ever the survivalist.
That’s it … try and buy yourself one more minute, you sick bastard.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Rollins said.
‘No.’
‘Do you know why I’m here?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then you won’t be biased.’
‘What do you want from me? Is it money? That’s not a problem. I have plenty of it. Just let me write the cheque.’
‘Actually, I am interested in that.’
Sheer relief flooded Xiao’s expression.
Pathetic.
‘How much?’ he said. ‘You will be a rich man. By the time you walk out of this house you will be worth millions. You will never have to worry about money again. But you must guarantee my survival, okay?’
Xiao spoke excellent English. Rollins wondered how many languages the man had a grasp of. He guessed plenty. More ways to communicate meant more avenues for business, and profits, and blood money.
‘I don’t want it,’ Rollins said. ‘I want to know how you got it.’
‘What?’
‘I wouldn’t use that tone again,’ Rollins said. ‘You want to know what it’s like to get shot? You ever been shot?’
Xiao started to speak, but Rollins raised an eyebrow. Immediately, the man changed trajectory.
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘I’ll be able to tell when you’re lying,’ Rollins said. ‘I’m quite good at that. Keep that in mind when you answer my questions. What’s the worst pain you’ve ever been in?’
‘A broken bone.’
‘Ah. So you’re clueless. How many times do you think I could shoot you before you dropped dead?’
Xiao said nothing, but the blood drained from his face. ‘Uh…’
‘I’m very good at selecting my shots. I could put you through a world of pain.’
‘What do you want?’ Xiao said.
‘Just some simple answers to some simple questions. But I want to make sure you tell the truth before I get started.’
‘I will tell the truth.’
‘You want to live, don’t you?’
‘More than anything.’
‘Good. So tell the truth.’
‘I promise.’
‘Tell me all the different ways you make money.’
Xiao paused. ‘What is this?’
‘Like I said. Simple questions.’
‘Drugs. Ransom. Whores. What else do you want?’
‘All of it.’
‘Those are the main three. Ransoms pay well if you know how to do it right. I don’t get involved anymore, though. Those days are over for me. I’m very hands-off. Have been for the last two or three years.’
‘And back in the old days?’
‘I had my hands in everything.’
‘You enjoyed it?’
‘It’s business.’
‘But did you enjoy it?’
Xiao must have picked up on the icy chill that had settled over Rollins, because he paused for effect, selecting his words carefully. He evidently didn’t want to slip up and catch a bullet in the skull.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very much so.’
‘How much are you worth?’
‘Nearly thirty-three million.’
‘You keep count?’
‘Yes. Every day.’
‘It’s important to you?’
‘Very.’
This is good, Rollins thought. He thinks I’m on the same wavelength. He’s opening up.
‘You got friends in this … business?’
‘Of course.’
‘In Italy?’
‘All over.’
‘You all keep in contact?’
‘Yes. You won’t get them or their money, though, if that’s what you’re after. We cover our tracks well. It’s a requirement for the industry.’
‘How exactly would you define the industry?’
‘Blood money, I guess,’ Xiao said with a smirk. ‘You can relate, I’m sure. You seemed to handle my men fairly easily.’
‘I did.’
‘You want a job?’
‘No thanks. One more question.’
‘Yes?’
‘You alw
ays been this way?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Answer this very carefully, and very truthfully,’ Rollins said. ‘Were you always like this? Ever since you were a kid? Did you ever consider other people?’
‘I’m not a psychologist,’ Xiao said, suddenly scowling. ‘What the fuck are you asking me these questions for? You having a mid-life crisis or something?’
‘Answer.’
‘Sounds like you’re getting awfully close to putting yourself on a high horse. I’d be careful about that.’
‘Would you?’ Rollins said.
Xiao scoffed. ‘How many men do you think you killed on your way in here? Five? Six? Some of them have families. I wasn’t sure if that’s what this was, but if you came in here to lecture me on morality, you came to the wrong place.’
‘I didn’t come here to lecture you on anything,’ Rollins said. ‘Now answer.’
‘That’s your last question?’
‘It is.’
‘If I answer it truthfully, you’ll respond fairly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, yes. I’ve always been this way. Ever since I can remember. Survival of the fittest.’
‘Thank you,’ Rollins said, and destroyed the top half of his head with a three-round burst from the HK416.
23
No matter how many times he experienced it, Rollins would never grow accustomed to the silence that unfolded in the aftermath of conflict.
With Xiao’s death, the last of the occupants were eliminated. Rollins left his corpse in the armchair — he didn’t need to do anything with it. The man probably covered his tracks well, but when the authorities stumbled across this mess in a day or a week’s time, Rollins doubted they would have much trouble bringing at least some details to light. From there it would be a messy and unsavoury descent down the rabbit hole.
He walked straight out of the study. The gory details from his skirmish through the villa became much more noticeable when they were all he had to pay attention to. Tunnel vision masked a great deal. Now he could see the arterial blood splattered across the carpet and the walls and the ceiling. He descended the grand staircase and glimpsed the bodies sprawled along the tiled floor. He stepped straight over them, wading around the blood.