The Will Slater Series Books 1-3

by Matt Rogers

  Slater skirted around the edges of the exterior lighting and braced himself against the cold. He crouched low, poised in the middle of the wasteland, and counted out a long series of breaths. Then he raced across the dimly lit stretch of land and pressed his back against the faded concrete wall beside the door. The door was set a half foot into the wall, creating a small portion of darkness the exterior lighting couldn’t reach.

  He ducked into the alcove, now hovering a few inches from the door.

  It rested slightly ajar.

  He lowered himself to waist height, leant forward, and listened intently for any sign of a hostile presence. For all he knew, the blonde guy could be rendezvousing with the entire army of mercenaries, ready to make their final approach to the icebreaker for…

  For God knows what, Slater thought.

  But he didn’t get that sense here. At first he’d assumed the blonde man was en route to his final destination, moving fast so he could implement his master plan, but this portion of the shipbuilding plant seemed dark, toxic, off the beaten track, hidden from the rest of the workers. He wondered how long the container ship had lain dormant — perhaps no-one had worked on it for years.

  This was a dead zone.

  Slater doubted the blonde man would lead a small army of security this far away from the main objective.

  So what is this?

  Perched in the shadows, he heard distant voices pass through the gap in the door. They washed over Slater for a brief moment, then passed through the alcove and disappeared in the wind.

  But he heard every word before they vanished.

  ‘Enjoyed yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Slater froze, gripping his weapons tighter. He recognised that voice. He knew the inflection…

  Above everything, he heard the sound of a running tap, and splashing water.

  The unknown voice said, ‘Time for payment. You’re our last customer.’

  The familiar voice said, ‘Last?’

  ‘I’m shutting down this operation tomorrow.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Myself and the rest of the men are needed for bigger and better things.’

  ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with the maiden voyage of the Moschnost icebreaker, does it? Because that timing would be awfully coincidental.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to be talking to me about it, I assume.’

  ‘I don’t care what you know. Who are you going to go to? The police? I’ll simply show them footage of what you just did.’

  A pause. Icy in intention. ‘You recorded it?’

  ‘I need reassurance, don’t I?’

  ‘Piece of shit. I’m not paying you a cent.’

  A harsh laugh. ‘Really? I don’t think you’re considering the ramifications of what I have on you.’

  ‘You’re a real piece of shit. You motherfucker. You’re violating everything we agreed on.’

  ‘You don’t have room to take the moral high ground here.’

  ‘Piece of—’

  ‘You will pay me every cent you owe me. It wasn’t easy to get what you wanted. We had to storm a fucking bar. You know how risky that was? Not much merchandise in Vladivostok like what you requested…’

  Slater didn’t hear another word, because rage as black as night seized hold of his insides. The beast returned, arriving before he could even think about preventing it, and then he lost all control of his motor functions. His limbs took on a life of their own. He let the darkness back in as soon as he pieced together what they were talking about.

  He swung the door open, raised the Makarov, and had it pointed square between the eyes of the blonde guy in an instant.

  Then his gaze moved to the second man.

  Iosif.

  The sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up past his forearms.

  Hunched over a rusting metal sink.

  Washing dark red blood off his hands.

  42

  Still dressed in the same business suit he was wearing on the luxury train, Iosif straightened up with his cheeks paling and his eyes widening. Slater kept the gun pointed squarely at the blonde man, because he figured Iosif wasn’t armed.

  Which proved correct.

  For the first time, Slater could get more of a look at the blonde guy than the back of his head. He was enormous, at least four inches taller than Slater with piercing blue eyes and a rigid jawline. In another life, he might have graced the cover of an international magazine — he was good looking enough to qualify for that. But at the same time there was a certain coldness to him, a chill that hung in the air, pouring out of his eyes and catching Slater in its icy grasp. He didn’t display any emotion as Slater announced his arrival, but behind the pale blue irises there was silent fury dwelling in the chasm.

  ‘Who are you?’ Slater said.

  ‘My name is Ruslan,’ the blonde guy said with barely a hint of an accent.

  ‘You work for the shipbuilding plant?’

  ‘Not exactly. I am contracted to work here. Who are you? Seems like you are not law enforcement. Which makes me curious.’

  ‘If I was law enforcement, you’d be feeling sorry for yourself. Seems like I’ve caught you at an awkward moment.’

  ‘No,’ Ruslan said, his lips barely moving as he spoke, supremely confident. ‘If you were law enforcement you would hesitate and try to arrest me and take me alive, at which point I would strip you of that gun and shove it down your throat until you choked on it. But you are something else, and I’ve never seen you before, so I assume you don’t work for Medved. In fact I think you’ve never been here. And, let’s see … yes. Yes, of course. The woman. She spoke of someone like you.’

  Slater tried to control himself, but he couldn’t. He strode across the space, closing into range, despite Ruslan’s dangerous confidence. To his credit, the man tried to put up a fight. As soon as he sensed opportunity he lunged, making a snatch for the outstretched Makarov, but in a one-on-one confrontation with no surprises he didn’t stand a chance.

  He almost got his hands on Slater’s wrist, too.

  Almost.

  Slater whipped his hand back, satisfied that the bait had worked. He thundered a boot into Ruslan’s groin, crushing his genitals under a steel-capped toe, and as the big man went down he stepped in with an elbow that sliced across the top of his temple, tearing the skin and causing a cascade of blood to run down the front of his face. Ruslan collapsed at Slater’s feet, bleeding uncontrollably, effectively rendered blind by the injury.

  Slater planted a foot on his chest and levelled the Makarov at his head.

  ‘Still confident?’

  Despite his ego, Ruslan shook his head. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You just bragged about the woman. What the fuck do you think I want?’

  ‘You’re too late.’

  ‘What exactly do you do here?’

  His face a crimson mask, Ruslan turned to look at Iosif. ‘I serve the customers.’

  Iosif cowered, guilt riddling his features, grotesquely morphing his face. He hadn’t managed to wash all the blood off his hands. Some of it had caked dry on his palms.

  ‘If you move,’ Slater said, ‘I’ll shoot you in the head.’

  Iosif nodded, traumatised by the thought of instant death. He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He was weak.

  Slater hauled Ruslan to his feet and kept the Makarov barrel trained on the back of his skull. Blood had stained the blonde hair crimson.

  ‘Show me,’ he said.

  ‘You do not want to see.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘You are better off killing us both now.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Ruslan sighed, steadied himself against the wall, and gestured to a doorway set into the far wall, cast in shadow. ‘Through there.’

  Slater jerked the barrel of the Makarov, commanding the big man to lead the way. Ruslan took the lead, sauntering slowly across the cold concrete. Drea
d hung in the atmosphere — it seeped from Iosif in the form of shame, it seeped from Ruslan in the form of frustration, and it seeped from Slater in the form of acceptance.

  He already knew what he would find.

  He just hoped it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

  Ruslan and Iosif entered a concrete chamber the size of a double garage, skewered into one corner of the building. There were no windows or secondary doorways. It was a private space, stripped bare of all furniture, devoid of any kind of decoration.

  Except for Natasha’s corpse, dangling from a rope in the centre of the room, her body mutilated.

  This time, Slater was ready to tame the beast. It roared inside him, telling him to make it as slow and painful as he could, but before he could give way to his darkest thoughts he recognised the need for answers.

  And Iosif would be useless.

  So Slater walked up to him, spun him around so he knew what was coming, and pressed the barrel into the man’s sweaty forehead.

  Iosif’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open. ‘No, wait, if you really want to know what—’

  Slater fired, deafening in the confined space. Brains blew out the back of Iosif’s head. His body hit the concrete with a wet smack.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said.

  43

  He twisted on the spot and had the barrel aimed at Ruslan’s head before the big man could even think about capitalising on an opportunity.

  He jerked it back toward the main space. ‘Out there. I’ve seen enough.’

  Ruslan nodded and strode out of the room, barely giving Iosif’s corpse a second glance. The old businessman meant nothing to him. Just another customer. The only annoyance about the man’s death would be the lack of payment. Slater had run into a thousand men like Ruslan before.

  As soon as they stepped out of the chamber, Slater unlocked his hips and pivoted on the spot, lightning fast. Ruslan didn’t even have time to raise his hands in defence. Slater’s shinbone drilled into his gut, crushing muscle tissue and possibly breaking a rib, and the big man spat blood and slumped into a defeated seated position against the wall.

  Slater pulled to a halt in front of the broken man. ‘What’s your background?’

  ‘If you think I am going to apologise you should kill me now.’

  ‘No, I know your type. But this is a certain kind of cruel. And it makes me suspect something.’

  ‘Suspect what?’ Ruslan said, gasping for breath.

  Slater remembered Pasha’s words.

  He seems permanently angry. Like someone took something away from him.

  Slater crouched down and touched the Makarov’s barrel, still warm, to Ruslan’s bloody forehead. ‘What’s your last name?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘I ran into something just as cruel as this the last time I visited the Far East. I found it at the bottom of a gold mine, not too far from here. And I think it runs in the family.’

  Ruslan’s eyes flashed brilliantly, sparkling with a second wind, brimming with rage. ‘You—’

  Slater tilted the Makarov’s barrel upward and smashed the butt into Ruslan’s forehead cut, aggravating the bleeding. The man crumpled and cowered and winced, his accusation cut off before he could make it.

  ‘Yes,’ Slater said. ‘If my suspicions are right, then I did exactly what you think I did.’

  Silent and seething, Ruslan stewed in agony.

  ‘What’s your last name?’ Slater repeated.

  ‘Mikhailov.’

  ‘Thought as much.’

  ‘Did you kill my brother?’

  ‘No,’ Slater said. ‘I didn’t have the honour. A close friend of mine killed Vadim Mikhailov. But I watched him do it. And I enjoyed every second of it.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Being a monster is genetic, I take it.’

  ‘I do what I need to do to make money.’

  ‘There are a million things you can do for money that don’t involve … this.’

  ‘We are good at this,’ Ruslan said, as if that said everything that needed to be said.

  ‘We?’

  ‘My brother and I.’

  ‘The gold mine,’ Slater said. ‘You were part of the crew that abducted people from rural villages. You brought them to the mine. You let your brother make them fight to the death.’

  ‘Like I said, we are good at getting profit from blood.’

  ‘Who was Iosif?’

  ‘Just a businessman,’ Ruslan said. ‘No-one special. Another guy with money to throw around and some suppressed sadistic tendencies. Those types pay well.’

  ‘You run this operation? You take people and let rich bastards have their way with them?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting around this godforsaken place for months. Sitting with nothing to do, waiting for the day I can avenge my brother, and it kept getting delayed. So I turned to what I knew well to make some extra cash as I waited. There’s enough alcoves in this plant to do anything with discretion.’

  ‘Delayed? What’s delayed?’

  Ruslan gave a sickening smile. ‘Oh … you don’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘You think I run this place.’

  ‘I assumed.’

  ‘I’m just one of the grunts with some spare time and some knowledge about how to get what I want from the world.’

  ‘You said you were going to avenge your brother with this grand scheme.’

  ‘But I don’t call the shots. Thankfully my aim aligns with the boss.’

  ‘And he is?’

  ‘No-one really knows.’

  ‘Awfully cryptic.’

  ‘He was a powerful man in a previous life. That’s all I’ve heard.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I don’t think he wants to show his face. Until the end.’

  ‘What end?’

  ‘Not my business to talk about that. Don’t you have a girlfriend to avenge?’

  Slater scraped the Makarov’s barrel down the top of Ruslan’s forehead, drawing more blood. ‘I have a feeling what you’ve been doing in this building will pale in comparison to whatever’s happening tomorrow. And, thankfully, I’m able to control my anger. So we have a little more time together. I’ll make it count.’

  ‘A little less than you think,’ Ruslan said, smiling at something over Slater’s shoulder.

  He didn’t have time to wheel around. As soon as he sensed something behind him he splayed forward, kicked so hard in the small of his back that for a moment he thought he was paralysed. Reaction speed and uncanny reflexes meant nothing when the concrete was rushing up to meet him, so as he brought both hands up to break his fall and save being crushed unconscious by the concrete, Ruslan fell on him in an explosion of high twitch muscle fibres.

  At that point, Slater was helpless.

  Ruslan tore the Makarov from Slater’s grasp and stomped down on the combat knife, wedging it between his giant boot and the dusty concrete. In desperation mode, Slater grasped at the hilt of the knife with a couple of fingers, hoping like all hell he could dislodge it from underneath the boot before he lost all control of the situation.

  Ruslan noticed, and stomped down with his other boot.

  Crunch-crunch-crunch.

  Three broken fingers.

  Nauseated, shocked, thoroughly rattled by the reverse in momentum, Slater instinctively snatched at his hand. Someone came up behind him and grabbed a handful of his hair, smashing his temple against the concrete. Slater moaned and rolled onto his back, reaching for the newcomer, trying to immobilise them.

  Someone shoved a gun barrel between his teeth.

  He sighed, tasted the harsh acrid tang of metal, and lay still.

  He couldn’t speak, but he could think.

  Fuck, he thought.

  44

  Before Slater could even get a proper look at the newcomer, Ruslan dashed over and stomped down on his forehead.

  Crrraaaackkkkk.

/>   For a moment, Slater thought his skull had exploded. Sandwiched between Ruslan’s boot and the concrete floor, an ear-splitting impact resonated through him, rattling his brain, thundering against his temples.

  As he fought to hold onto consciousness, he figured it was one of the more devastating blows he’d ever taken in the field.

  Perfectly placed.

  With an uncanny amount of power behind it.

  As Ruslan removed his boot, Slater audibly moaned. An involuntary reaction to the strike. If the man had stamped on his head any harder, it might have caused irreversible brain damage. In any case, it rendered him useless. A small parcel of energy reserves he kept in the back of his mind for times of extreme emergency fizzled out. His brain reeled. His vision swam. His ears throbbed. His temples screamed for relief.

  Seeking reprieve from the agony, he wondered for a terrifying moment if he would ever be the same.

  Then the initial wave subsided, replaced with something close to acceptance. To avoid hyperventilating he concentrated on his breathing at the expense of everything else, allowing Ruslan and the newcomer to drag him into the corner and drop him in a heap on the floor.

  They backed off.

  Slater shut his eyes, figuring if they wanted to kill him they would have done it already. He had to use every fibre of his concentration to prevent himself descending into a full-blown panic attack. Because the stomp to the head had rattled him in a way he wasn’t accustomed to. In this state, he was actively flirting with permanent scarring. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t see, couldn’t here. The uncertainty threatened to compound, the fear adding to itself in a natural downward spiral, and he forced himself to avoid that chain of events with all the willpower left in his broken body.

  Ironic.

  He had tested the limits of the human body so many times he’d lost count. He’d been shot, stabbed, beaten to within an inch of his life, and still managed to push through to completion of the mission. But the brain was a fickle bitch. Sensitive as all hell. Knocked in a certain direction, pushed a sliver too far, and it could cause permanent, debilitating damage. Slater allowed the pain to seep away and hoped with everything he had left that he wouldn’t be crippled by the injury.