by Matt Rogers
Then there was just his own fate to worry about.
He didn’t imagine he would have to worry for much longer.
Half a second later he smashed into a wooden platform with enough force to splinter it into two massive pieces. He tore straight through, letting out an unbridled yell as he sensed the bone in his forearm snap cleanly in two. He fell another few feet and bounced off a metal pipe, knocked off-course into another mess of plastic sheeting and wooden planks. This time he crunched through enough material to slow him considerably, and when he finally came to a halt amidst the devastation it took him a few beats to realise he was alive.
Probably not for long.
He’d never experienced pain quite like this. Battlefield injuries could be gruesome, but they seldom carried the intensity of what he was feeling right now. A bullet wound resulting in massive blood loss could cause unconsciousness pretty fast, but this was a different kind of injury. Blunt force trauma had been applied to every square inch of his body, and he realised the extent of his wounds when he tried to shift his weight around in the pile of wood and rubble and found himself helpless.
He couldn’t move.
The headache that surged into existence drilled into his eyeballs, like a blowtorch applied to his brain. He could barely stomach the agony, and when his vision transitioned into murky darkness he almost welcomed it. Anything would be a relief compared to the beating his body had taken from the fall. Then again, the fact that was he alive to feel this pain was a pleasant surprise. He’d been ready to die when he hurled himself off the edge of the eighth floor, and that knowledge would take some time to process when he regained his health.
The darkness was absolute, and Slater could see nothing. He didn’t even know where he’d come to rest — it couldn’t have been much lower than the sixth floor, considering a longer fall would almost certainly have killed him. He lay motionless, surrounded by destruction, and waited for something, anything, to happen.
At some point he blacked out. Amidst the cocktail of pain wracking his body and the darkened surroundings on all sides, it was hard to tell when unconsciousness took hold. Everything was a seething blur of swirling night. His awareness became similar to an old projector switching between slides — every now and then something happened to seize his attention. A flash of light. A quiet voice. Some kind of commotion nearby. None of it meant anything. If there were any members of the Eastern European gang left in the construction site, they would dispose of him fairly effortlessly. He couldn’t move.
Although getting him out of the scaffolding would prove cumbersome.
He kept lying there, and hurting, and exhaling laboured breaths. He couldn’t do anything else. Hours seemed to pass, but it might have been minutes.
When the broken scaffolding around him started to move, and the whir of some kind of heavy machinery started up close by, he could barely muster the energy to turn his head. It seemed as if he’d aged ten years, but that didn’t make any sense considering it was still dark.
A blinding light shone in his face, and the wooden planks underneath him shifted in place — the entire framework of scaffolding he was resting on had been adjusted. More machinery whined, and a calm voice asked him if he was okay.
He wasn’t sure where the words came from.
He couldn’t see what lay inches in front of his face.
He nodded once, and then blacked out again.
Sinking to a darker place.
Before he fully gave himself over to the darkness, he played back the mental image of the woman’s body crumpling on the eighth floor. He thought of the way her shoulders had slumped, and her knees had given out, and all the life had been sapped from her in an inconceivably short amount of time.
He would never forget it.
27
Thirty days later…
Lars Crawford didn’t particularly like Chicago all that much.
He kept a purposeful stride through the downtown district, never losing sight of the destination he had in mind. Every now and then he locked eyes with the odd passerby, and he never failed to exchange a polite nod of acknowledgement with them. By all accounts he was a quiet, unassuming man. He wondered if anyone would guess that during work hours — which seemed to consist of every waking moment these days — he ran one of the most secretive government divisions the United States military had ever seen.
At five-foot-nine, with a skinny unathletic frame and a weak jawline, he didn’t have much in common with most of the black operations soldiers he handled on a day to day basis. By necessity, they were often large, unimaginably powerful men with the physical capabilities to effectively carry out the instructions delivered to them by their own brilliant minds.
Prodigies, all things considered.
Lars certainly labelled Will Slater a prodigy.
In the aftermath of the destruction, it had been concluded that Slater had killed thirteen men — Ray D’Agostino included — on that single night in Chicago. Of course, none of this had been officially determined by any authorities — Black Force had their own internal investigation process, something of a requirement when they controlled operatives who could do whatever the hell they wanted in the field. They needed to hold their men accountable for their actions, and after a turbulent two weeks of consideration, Lars and his superiors had come to the conclusion that Will Slater had done incredible work.
An unsavoury collection of Dagestani criminals had been massacred, and the police and media had chalked it up to a horrific gang war. No-one had ever suspected it had been the work of a single individual.
An individual who Lars had flown from Washington to meet.
He’d already been given the address. He found the rusting metal door wedged between a delicatessen and a barber, sporting a tiny silver plaque with the inscription LIONEL’S BOXING GYM carved in uneven letters. Not his first choice for their first in-person meeting since the debacle had unfolded, but Slater was the one calling the shots.
He could afford to now, after everything he’d done.
Lars and his colleagues all understood the intrinsic value they had in an operative like Will Slater.
Even though he was young, he was walking in the footsteps of the warrior responsible for the division’s creation.
For the first time ever, Lars found himself thinking, Jason King’s got competition.
He descended a narrow set of concrete stairs, battling a small wave of claustrophobia. The ceiling hovered only a few inches above his head, and the confines of the space stank of dried sweat and exertion. Lars was unsurprised that Slater had ended up here, especially considering the fact that doctors had told him it would take six months to get back to full health.
At five thirty in the morning, Slater was the only man here. Apparently he’d struck up a relationship with the owner over the course of his month-long recuperation, and the elderly Lionel allowed Slater twenty-four-seven access to the space. Lars had taken the information in stride, simply nodding when one of his underlings informed him about the odd development.
Slater’s physical condition wasn’t the only thing the man needed to recuperate.
Lars found Slater in the corner of the gym, which consisted of a long low stretch of basement with memorabilia on the walls and old-school boxing equipment spread across the floor. The man had taken up position in front of a heavy bag shaped like a teardrop, suspended from the concrete ceiling by a thick metal chain.
Old-school.
Just the way Slater liked it.
Lars crossed the room, overwhelmingly out of place amongst the sweat-stained equipment, and kept his mouth shut as he observed one of his finest operatives. Slater stood with his chin held high, possessed with an inner confidence, refusing to cower in the face of the list of injuries he’d suffered. Some obstacles couldn’t be overcome, so his left arm remained bound in a sling as the bones in his forearm healed from a pair of clean breaks.
But his right arm worked just fine.
An
eight-ounce boxing glove had been pulled over Slater’s right fist, covered in sweat droplets that had run down his arm. The man was shirtless, wearing simple athletic shorts, and as Lars watched he hammered a relentless stream of uppercuts into the heavy bag, shouting with every impact. Sweat sprayed off his frame with every blow. There wasn’t an ounce of body fat on him, even though he’d been bed ridden for close to a month. Lars could see the spark in his eyes, the feverish rage spurring him onward. He counted twenty-eight consecutive uppercuts before Slater dropped his one-armed attack and took a deep breath, allowing the perspiration to cascade off him in droves.
‘You sleeping?’ Lars said, leaning against one post of the nearby boxing ring.
Slater turned, running the glove over his forehead to wipe away the sweat. ‘Not really. I just see her crumpling. Over and over again.’
Lars nodded.
The woman, Brooke Davies, had been thirty-two years old. The bullet had struck her in the centre of her chest and pulverised her internal organs. There had been no chance of survival. Her daughter had seen everything, and was being monitored for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. She was back home with her father.
‘You did unbelievable work, Will,’ Lars said. ‘You can’t forget that.’
Slater stood motionless for a long beat, then turned and hammered another uppercut into the heavy bag. The sound of the leather glove hitting the material sent a gunshot-like crack through the empty basement.
‘I did work,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t unbelievable. She died.’
‘You saved seven people.’
‘I should have saved eight.’
‘Slater…’
‘When am I back in the field?’
‘Uh…’
‘Surely you have something lined up?’
‘Your arm, Will.’
‘It’s healing. As soon as it’s ready, I want something.’
‘An operation?’
‘The worst shit you’ve got.’
‘We have a lot of bad stuff. That’s sort of the nature of this job.’
‘I don’t care where you send me. But get me moving again.’
‘You want to make things right?’
‘Of course. Only way I can do that is to succeed next time.’
‘You succeeded this time.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Four kids who got to go home to their families will tell you otherwise.’
‘Brooke’s not here to tell me anything.’
‘What happened in that construction site, Slater?’
Lars was desperate for genuine information. Slater had been frustratingly quiet about the entire ordeal, withdrawing into himself as soon as he was able to recover in private. There had been the painstaking process of withdrawing him from the public hospital system after the authorities had pried him out of the stairwell one month earlier, but as soon as Black Force had silenced anyone in the know and calmly informed the necessary parties that Slater no longer existed, he’d been free to recover in privacy.
And he hadn’t felt like talking much at all.
Slater twisted on the spot again, revealing glistening muscles trailing up his abdomen, and smashed another punch into the heavy bag with lethal ferocity. If he’d been targeting a human being, he might have killed them from the blunt force trauma alone.
‘I hesitated,’ he said.
‘Froze on the spot?’
‘Sort of. You wouldn’t have been able to tell. But I did.’
‘And you think you could’ve saved Brooke otherwise?’
‘I know I could’ve.’
‘So what happens now? How’s your headspace?’
Three more punches detonated off the leather bag.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
‘Headspace is fine,’ Slater muttered. ‘But get me back out there as soon as you can.’
‘To do what?’
Slater stared at Lars across the room, a bright glint in his eyes. ‘Not hesitate.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Lars mumbled. ‘Take it easy, hey? You don’t want to disrupt the healing process of that arm.’
‘I am taking it easy,’ Slater said, and fired off two punches into the bag, veins pumping and sweat flowing.
Lars nodded, and turned his back on Will Slater.
Making his way up to the downtown Chicago street, he found himself intensely curious to see what Slater did next. Something told him he had his hands on one of the most notable raw talents the military had ever seen. Not for his physical gifts, or his mental prowess — there were dozens of prodigies that had come through the ranks of the Special Forces over the years.
But when Lars found someone with that type of relentless mindset, he didn’t take it lightly.
A soft voice in the back of his head told him Will Slater would have a career for the ages.
WILL SLATER WILL RETURN.
MORE NOVELS AND SHORTS, COMING SOON…
THE JASON KING SERIES
Isolated (Book 1)
Imprisoned (Book 2)
Reloaded (Book 3)
Betrayed (Book 4)
Corrupted (Book 5)
Hunted (Book 6)
THE JASON KING FILES
Cartel (Book 1)
Warrior (Book 2)
Savages (Book 3)
THE WILL SLATER SERIES
Wolf (Book 1)
Lion (Book 2)
Bear (Book 3)
BLACK FORCE SHORTS
The Victor (Book 1)
The Chimera (Book 2)
The Tribe (Book 3)
The Hidden (Book 4)
The Coast (Book 5)
The Storm (Book 6)
The Wicked (Book 7)
The King (Book 8)
The Joker (Book 9)
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About the Author
Matt Rogers grew up in Melbourne, Australia as a voracious reader, relentlessly devouring thrillers and mysteries in his spare time. Now, he writes full-time. His novels are action-packed and fast-paced. Dive into the Jason King Series to get started with his collection.
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