by Matt Rogers
And then he saw it.
Griffin narrowed his eyes and spotted the stone structure slapped into a narrow crook between two cliff faces — the building was enormous to be even visible from this distance, especially considering its state of disrepair. Moss covered the entire exterior of the fortress, to the point where Griffin’s eyes might have passed over it had he not been specifically looking for it. It hadn’t been preserved like the famous monasteries of Bhutan, instead left to rot away into the side of the mountain.
From this vantage point, Griffin recognised exactly what Lars had been talking about. There was no convenient approach to the fortress aside from strolling up to its entrance. The monastery was backed up against a sheer cliff-face, and the variable of a subterranean cave complex only complicated the issue.
Griffin could be walking into anything.
He had to accept that, and pray that the element of surprise would lean the odds in his favour.
Not a chance, a voice told him.
But he wouldn’t do anything else.
He set off up the hillside before the rational portion of his brain could scream at him to retreat. One foot in front of the other — that was all it took. Before he knew what he was doing he’d set off in the direction of the fortress, and by that point there was no going back.
If the occupants hadn’t seen him by now — a solitary figure powering up the largely empty hillside — then they deserved whatever they had coming their way.
But these were professionals.
And, sure enough, ten minutes into the trek Griffin looked up to see two foggy silhouettes descending down from the fortress complex. They were still at least a mile away, but everything was visible in this strange landscape, and it was inevitable that they would meet.
Griffin could do nothing but move to meet them. He discarded the satellite phone in a nearby bush and pressed on. He knew where the fortress was. Keeping the phone would only raise more questions.
The terrain turned inhospitable as he ascended out of the flat plains and dipped into the choking forests of the mountainside. Wind battered away at his shirt, and he reached up and wiped a thick lock of hair away from his eyes. He’d grown it out during his time in the Delta Force, and had been on the verge of shaving his head when his stint in Bhutan had taken a dark road.
This was the most stressful part. The approach. The awareness that whatever happened past this point would inevitably be violent. There was no alternative.
Thankfully, that suited Griffin just fine.
He looked up the trail and spotted the point in the mountainside where he would meet the approaching party.
And he spotted a window of opportunity.
He was unaccustomed to this. Combat, to him, was something straightforward. At least it had been in every circumstance so far during his career. Now he’d dipped his toe in the muddy water of something very close to espionage. This was not his life — he seemed like an imposter in his own skin.
But he would have to get used to it, because if he made it off the mountain his life would take a dark turn into deception.
The pair of paramilitary thugs approaching him didn’t know who he was.
For the first time in his life, Colt Griffin sensed raw potential running through his system. He could act. He could play the fool.
And, as the two parties converged on the fog-laden mountainside, Griffin realised he was born to do this.
8
The thugs were taking no chances.
Griffin raised his arms as high as they would go, fingers splayed, and allowed an expression of unbridled terror to wash over his face as he pretended to notice the weapons in their hands for the first time. They both carried INSAS assault rifles, which set Griffin on edge. He couldn’t imagine the men acquiring the weapons anywhere other than the equipment room of the Dzong he’d visited hours earlier. He envisioned one of the soldiers in the converted fortress nodding with greed as the paramilitary force flashed their cash.
Griffin had been right not to inherently trust them.
And it explained why the translator had been so jumpy.
If the man knew of the heavily-armed force in the mountains — and, in fact, had armed them himself — there could be little other explanation for Griffin’s purpose. He’d probably been trying to avoid Griffin’s arsenal being traced back to the Dzong.
Now, Griffin pulled to a halt on the churned dirt, steadying himself against the buffeting wind. At this altitude the cloud hung low and thick, blanketing everything in a weak fog. It gave the surrounding trees an ethereal look, as if Griffin had stepped into some kind of paranormal wasteland. The sound of his heart hammering in his chest didn’t help the strangeness of the situation.
And it certainly didn’t help that he would need to put on the acting performance of his life in a few short seconds.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he shouted through the cool mountain air. ‘What’s up, guys? There’s no need for any of that…’
Inwardly, he noted with bemusement that the pair of approaching hostiles were rednecks. Maybe Griffin had even grown up in the same town as them. They were both similar-looking, with close-cropped short brown hair and pudgy faces. They had the big, stocky builds of powerlifters, which Griffin had to admit took him by surprise. He couldn’t imagine them carting gym equipment up to the monastery. He wondered how long they’d been stationed at the ancient fortress.
They held their weapons like untrained thugs, which they more than likely were. Ex-soldiers, no doubt, but there were varying degrees of military experience. Griffin imagined he was at the polar opposite end of the spectrum to the men in front of him. But that didn’t change the fact that they were both armed with fully automatic rifles, and he was not.
That tilted things in their favour, unless…
‘What the fuck are you doing out here, boy?’ the man on the left spat, scorn in his voice.
‘I-I’m sorry. I got lost. Am I not supposed to be here?’
‘You’re ten miles from the nearest town,’ the guy on the right said. ‘That’s a long trek to make by mistake.’
For added effect he jabbed the barrel of the INSAS rifle in Griffin’s direction. It would have been simple enough to catch the weapon at the very end of its jab and wrench it sideways and destroy the soft tissue of the man’s throat with an elbow, but Griffin stayed in place. The guy on the left had a beat on him, and he couldn’t eliminate two barrels pointed in his direction at the same time.
‘Are you guys from the Royal Army?’ Griffin said, even though it was perfectly clear that these men were more than likely from Texas.
But a foolish tourist would simply see the barrels of their weapons like a deer caught in headlights, and assume they were military of some kind.
The guy on the left grinned — sadistic in his glee. ‘Yeah, boy. We’re from the Army. In fact you’re gonna have to come with us for trespassing.’
‘Come on, guys,’ Griffin said, faking a nervous smile. ‘I’ll turn around and be on my way, hey? No need to make this a scene.’
‘Oh, I think you’re too late for that, hombré,’ the guy on the right said. ‘You ain’t supposed to be here.’
‘Then I’ll be off back down the mountain. Sorry to disturb—’
The guy on the left stepped forward and squashed the INSAS barrel into Griffin’s throat.
Griffin froze up in apparent terror, trying his best to let the blood drain from his face. It helped that — acting or not — the risk of getting shot was high. It didn’t matter how much training he had. These men were jumpy and clearly shocked by the appearance of a stranger at the foot of their base. He wondered how long it had been since they’d made contact with civilisation.
‘Okay,’ Griffin mumbled. ‘Okay, okay. Do you want my money?’
‘We’ve got enough of that,’ the guy on the right smiled.
Griffin noticed them staring at each other, wordlessly deciding what to do with this strange bumbling tourist.
&nbs
p; ‘We can’t let him go,’ the guy on the left said. ‘He’s seen us.’
‘You think the boys downstairs will have any use for him?’
‘I’m sure they will.’
‘Let’s hand him over then.’
Griffin knew exactly what they were talking about, but he had to pretend to be oblivious. His insides twisted as he contemplated the ramifications of failure — he would be handed over to the scientists in the subterranean caves, a human guinea pig delivered on a silver platter for testing purposes. It hardened his nerves — previously he’d been hesitant to dish out violence on these two men, considering how little he knew about them.
Now, though, he wouldn’t hesitate.
The guy on the left circled around behind Griffin, dragging the cold barrel of his INSAS rifle along the skin of his neck. The metal caught on the side of his throat and drew a thin dollop of blood — Griffin felt the warmth running down to his collar. When the man had the assault rifle pressed against the back of Griffin’s neck, he shoved him forward.
‘Walk,’ he said.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Just walk.’
‘Could I please call my family and tell them—’
The guy shoved the barrel hard enough into the back of Griffin’s neck to send him stumbling forward, almost taken off his feet by the force of the shove.
‘Walk,’ the man hissed.
The three-man procession meandered up the hillside, heading further into the clouds. The guy on the right kept his rifle pointed at the ground, swinging it uselessly by his side with every stride. Griffin gave thanks for the man’s ineptitude, but he probably thought his buddy had enough control over the situation to deem a second trained weapon unnecessary. He led the way, moving slightly ahead and a little to the right of Griffin. The other guy kept a measured pace directly behind him, never taking the INSAS barrel off the back of his neck.
Griffin scrutinised the path ahead — it twisted around a collection of rock formations jutting out of the mountainside. There were great sheets of granite slapped down at random across the uneven ground, proving large obstacles en route to the ancient fortress half a mile above.
Griffin could make out the outline of the monastery, but anything other than that was shrouded in a haze. Nevertheless he kept up the demeanour for as long as he was out in the open, just in case any of the men stationed at the fortress had eyes on them through the fog.
Then the trail crossed along the rear of a larger rock formation, blocking them from view of the monastery.
Griffin ducked away from the assault rifle’s barrel as fast as his limbs would allow.
9
Take out the alert guy first.
Griffin had never experienced hand to hand combat at such a visceral level. His brief stints in the heat of combat had involved long range gunfire exchanges — not this. Not feet apart from a hostile who had every intention of shooting him down in the dirt, or beating him into a pulp. He’d been in street fights before, but nothing carried the weight or the savagery of what he was currently embroiled in.
One wrong move, and he would die.
It was oddly freeing. He found himself connected to his body, putting every last ounce of effort into every movement, aware that the failure to give it his all would result in a bullet in the back of his head.
So he threw his head off the centre line and jerked back, crashing into the guy behind him with all his bodyweight. Air exploded from the guy’s lips as Griffin smashed into his stomach with all two hundred pounds of his frame. He bent at the knees and then burst upward, knocking the INSAS rifle skyward with his shoulder. Then he was at close range, so he gripped the guy’s customised military fatigues, spun him around and hurled him into his comrade.
The pair went down, and Griffin was already on top of them.
He wrestled the INSAS rifle off the first guy, simply using brute strength to wrench it out of the man’s grip. A gunshot this close to the monastery, amidst such silent surroundings, would spell nothing but disaster. Griffin knew he couldn’t allow a round to be fired. So he spun the bulky assault rifle in his grip and swung it like a baseball bat down at the first guy’s head.
He underestimated the power of adrenalin.
There was a sickening crunch and the man went limp. Griffin wasn’t able to know for sure, but he expected the guy was dead — or very close to it. He turned to the other hostile — who had just managed to wriggle his way out from underneath his friend — and swung the rifle’s stock with the same ferocity into the centre of his chest. Another crunch sounded, and the guy went down wheezing and spluttering, his own rifle forgotten.
Griffin kicked it away, then let fly with another swing of the rifle for good measure, targeting the same centre mass.
A third consecutive crunch rumbled down the mountainside.
Then there was silence.
Griffin let the quiet drape over the trail. He knew the limits the Operator Training Course had pushed him past, and he knew of the untapped physical potential that he’d never had the chance to use, but it hadn’t become clear to him until that moment.
Lars’ words rang in his ears.
We think you haven’t had enough experience in the field to realise your true talents.
He stood there on the mountainside, recognising what lay in front of him but having trouble comprehending how it had happened.
It had all felt so incredibly … easy.
The first guy was definitely dead. Griffin didn’t spend long lingering on the sight of his corpse — one side of his skull had been caved in by the rifle swing. The other guy was silently wheezing, pale as a ghost, clutching his chest. His internal injuries were no doubt severe, but he would stay alive for a while longer. That said, he seemed incapable of speech. His eyes had almost rolled into the back of his head from the sheer amount of pain he was in.
Griffin couldn’t conjure up any kind of remorse. These men had been ready to hand him over as a test subject for some kind of super virus. In fact, he thought the first man had got off easy by being subjugated to such a quick death.
Then again, he wasn’t one to linger on suffering.
He set to work immediately, even though he didn’t quite know the reasoning behind his actions. Lars had told him he would improvise in the moment, and he was obliging. He’d come to the mountain without the slightest hint of a plan, and as expected things were falling into place. Each action opened a new realm of opportunities, and he pounced on the first one he saw.
He spotted a woollen balaclava hanging out of the dead guy’s combat belt — likely to protect from the cold at this altitude. Everything lined up. He set to work stripping the corpse of its clothing. In less than a minute he tore off his old civilian hiking clothes and slipped into the dead guy’s faded military fatigues, likely picked out of the Bhutan Royal Army’s surplus and stripped of any identifiable symbols. Then he switched his hiking boots for the mercenary’s combat boots and tugged the balaclava over his head. With one hand he snatched up the INSAS rifle he’d used to beat the two men into the dirt, and with the other he hauled the second guy to his feet.
The man winced and groaned and turned even paler still.
‘Come on,’ Griffin muttered. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
He looped his free hand around the guy’s back, supporting the man’s weight. The guy wouldn’t be able to stand on his own. The blows from the rifle might have shattered his sternum. He would have trouble breathing, moving, and speaking for quite some time.
That was, if he survived his injuries.
‘You—’ the guy started, and Griffin smashed the heel of his palm into the man’s lower jaw.
He felt a couple of teeth dislodge under his hand and the guy drooped his head, spitting blood into the dirt.
Griffin steadied the guy’s weight on his free arm and set off in the direction of the monastery.
He couldn’t allow the man to speak a word when they entered the fortress.
T
hat was, if his rudimentary attempt at entry even made it past the first stage.
10
As soon as they emerged out from behind the rock formation, Griffin expected his head to be blown off by a long-range gunshot.
There were too many variables.
The three consecutive impacts with the rifle had broken bone after bone, and surely the reverberations must have echoed up the trail…
Surely Griffin had spent too long behind cover — masked from view of the fortress — to arouse suspicion…
Surely he looked nothing like the man he’d just beaten to death with a single swing…
Surely, this wouldn’t work.
But Griffin had no more time to think, because the trail reached its natural conclusion at the base of the enormous staircase in front of the monastery. A set of stone steps spiralled up, culminating in a pair of massive entrance doors at least twice the size of the Dzong military building Griffin had been so awed by hours earlier. They hung invitingly ajar.
Griffin immersed himself in a second acting clinic and bowed his head in apparent pain as he hurried his supposed comrade up the staircase.
The guy on Griffin’s arm eked out a grunt of agony as he moved. He could barely keep his feet underneath him, even though Griffin was supporting most of his bodyweight. There was little chance he would be able to alert his comrades in the monastery that all was not as it seemed.
I hope.
He needed the guy on his arm to lend the scene any credibility whatsoever. Even identifying Griffin as an imposter would require a double take at the very minimum, and he simply needed those few beats of hesitation to make his move. Having one of the paramilitary soldiers hanging off his arm would make things more believable.
Perhaps not for long.
But Griffin didn’t need long.
He confirmed the INSAS was ready to fire, because any kind of hesitation once he was within the walls would spell disaster. Satisfied, he screwed up his face in an attempt to signify immense pain — having the added effect of disguising his features through the wool of the balaclava — and hurried to the top of the staircase. There was no-one in sight, but once again he recalled Lars’ words.