by Matt Rogers
He tried not to panic. There was little to do but sit in the dark, regulate his breathing, and conserve his energy. As he adjusted to the new baseline, he realised it wasn’t as bad as he initially thought. There’d been a lot of initial anxiety to overcome, but it wasn’t anything worse than a dull ache all over. He felt slightly more lethargic than normal, but that wasn’t much different from the rest of the trip. And if he could silence the worry over his elevated heart rate, he’d be in the clear.
But to put that into practice proved a lot harder than he thought.
He focused on breathing deeper, a vain attempt to inhale more oxygen, but it didn’t help. He ended up practically hyperventilating, and struggled to suppress the sound of laboured breathing. The rasping would carry through the night if he allowed it.
Then something else carried through the night.
Another twig snapping.
Clunk.
Slater had heard it before, so even though he froze up he didn’t assume the worst.
Then, at the very edge of his hearing, he picked up the faint muttering of a curse in a foreign language.
In the distance someone lit up a torch, and the white beam played across the trail.
Slater sat very, very still.
His heart thudded faster.
Faster…
Faster…
Dangerously fast.
He couldn’t take his mind off it. His muscles were screaming for oxygen, and to amplify the problem his adrenaline reserves kicked in. His vision narrowed to a tunnel and he fixated on the beam of light, only for his body to silently protest.
‘King,’ Slater mouthed.
He only allowed a sliver of sound to escape his lips.
No response.
‘King.’
Silence.
The beam of light drifted closer. Then a second one materialised right beside it, and together the beams swept through the trees further up the trail. Slater narrowed his gaze and thought he could make out a cluster of silhouettes behind the light, hunched over, barely illuminated.
Coming down the mountain.
Getting closer.
‘King.’
A little louder this time.
He had to risk it.
Beside him, King stirred.
And murmured, ‘Huh?’
Too loud.
Far too loud.
The beam swept towards them, and Slater heard grunts of curiosity.
He waited a beat longer so he could be sure he wasn’t about to massacre civilians who’d wandered astray.
Someone racked a handgun slide a half-second later.
Slater raised the P320, steadied his aim, and emptied the whole magazine.
Ten .45 ACP rounds ripped through the trees and riddled the group. The silhouettes jerked and twisted in the lowlight, and the torch beams twisted and spiralled away. One torch fell off the mountainside, and its glow emanated all the way down the slope. The other dropped to the trail and rolled back in the direction of the insurgents, illuminating their corpses laced with bullets. Slater had caught one man in the neck, two in the head, and another in his exposed chest. There were four bodies in the dirt.
Ten unsuppressed rounds on a quiet windy mountainside sounds like fireworks from a mile away.
To the person holding the gun, it’s a nightmare.
Slater couldn’t hear a thing. Tinnitus whined in his eardrums, preventing him from communicating with King. He was temporarily deaf as he shuffled out of his sleeping bag. He rose to his knees and his head swam. His head pounded and his heart throbbed and his muscles protested.
You’re in bad shape, he told himself. Real bad shape.
But that didn’t achieve anything, so he quashed that voice and focused on reloading the Sig.
When his hearing came back, King was yelling.
It gave him the fright of his life.
‘What?’ he said, still compromised. ‘What did you say?’
He was talking to thin air. The better his hearing returned, the more he could assess where he was in the woods. Without sight, all he had to rely on was his hearing, so the temporary deafness had tested his mettle. Fumbling based on touch alone proved horrifying, and now he realised King was a dozen feet further into the forest, and moving fast.
‘Follow me!’ King screamed, seeming to recognise that his comrade was compromised. ‘There’s more.’
Fuck.
Slater got up, kicked the sleeping bag away, and sprinted blind up the hill into the trees.
48
Well-trained combatants think there’s a way to adapt to any situation.
And usually there is.
But sometimes the stimuli becomes too much.
Sometimes you get overwhelmed.
Sometimes…
…it all falls apart.
King quickly realised that moving blind was a whole lot more debilitating than he thought. He put his bad foot down and it went straight into a pothole, which caused the heel to strike at an awkward angle, and suddenly his swollen ankle was on fire. He fought that aside and threw himself forward on his good leg, limping up the hillside into the brush.
Behind him, a cacophony of voices rose up the mountainside.
They were fucked. Completely, totally, utterly fucked.
No point downplaying it.
If you survive this, he found himself thinking, you can survive anything.
He yelled for Slater to move.
There was no response.
Then, a few moments later, a soft voice floated up the hill. ‘What? What did you say?’
King saw torch beams light up the trail like a series of beacons.
And then the first of the bullets whisked through the trees, a dozen feet to his left.
They know you’re here.
So he threw caution to the wind and screamed, ‘Follow me! There’s more.’
Slater seemed to get the message. There was a brief pause, and then someone whisked past King — a silhouette racing up the mountain.
King said, ‘Was that you?’
‘Yeah,’ Slater called from above, and ground to a halt.
It was impossible to coordinate in the dark.
They set up position between a pair of wide trunks spaced a few feet apart, leaving them a slim gap to fire potshots at the approaching cavalry.
King got down on one knee, taking weight off his ankle, and narrowed his focus. He found two beams heading into the tree line. He raised the P320, took careful aim, and pumped the trigger.
Once, twice, three times.
The light went out, struck by a bullet, and a guttural scream rose up the mountainside.
The other torchlight instantly shut off.
‘Oh, shit,’ King whispered under his breath.
One by one, the torches died.
Leaving utter darkness in its place.
Slater cursed too.
King dropped the volume of his voice back to less than a whisper and said, ‘How do we play this?’
‘I don’t know.’
The alpine wind rustled the treetops, and some of the undergrowth around them caught in the breeze. There were sounds all around them now. Shaking and rattling and, between it all, the odd scuffing of boots.
The rebels were in the forest.
Something primal took over, and he started gnashing his teeth together. Unable to control his impulses, he crouched lower and pressed his back to the tree trunk, losing clarity of the situation as adrenaline swamped him. He knew what was happening.
Desperation mode.
There would be no firefight out here — not in the dark, on an isolated mountainside, without night-vision goggles or a similar enhancement. And he highly doubted that rural Nepali Maoist insurgents had access to that sort of tech.
So there’d be close-quarters fumbling — running around in the dark until two parties stumbled into each other — and then it would all come down to reflexes. Who could get the first shot off, who could capitalise after
the initial shock.
Which, of course, favoured King and Slater.
But that was a dangerous game to play, no matter your reaction speed.
So he whistled softly to Slater, and breathed, ‘Go left.’
Slater understood.
If they separated into different sides of the forest, they’d minimise the risk of running into each other and accidentally killing their only comrade.
King heard the rustle of khakis in the undergrowth heading in the other direction, and then Slater was gone.
He breathed in, and out.
Alone in the wilderness.
Then he peeled off to the right, taking his back off the tree.
Exposing himself to the unknown.
He kept quiet as a mouse. All those years of training came to the forefront, and he crept through the night without making so much as a peep. There were low-hanging branches on his face, and brushing against his shoulders, and his knees slithered through the plants on the forest floor.
And then a silhouette reared up out of the gloom, only inches away.
They both recognised each other’s presence in unison.
But King was faster. That was guaranteed. His old black-ops division had recruited him for a reason, and most of it came down to otherworldly reflexes. Due to genetic blessing, his brain computed data at a faster rate than most on this planet.
So before the insurgent even knew what he was dealing with, King had darted into range and fired two shots through his heart. A death rattle escaped the man’s throat and he collapsed forward, which was King’s intention all along. King caught him by the lapels and allowed the corpse to fall over his shoulder, which would protect him if—
Every insurgent in the area reacted to the unsuppressed Sig Sauer by pointing their weapons in that direction and emptying their clips.
At the same time, King used his own muzzle flares to identify two more Maoists at close range, and as the gunfight erupted he sized up his targets carefully and fired a double-tap into each of their faces.
So they sprayed and prayed, and a stray bullet clipped the body draped over King’s shoulder, but thankfully there was enough bone and internal organs to make it ricochet off its trajectory, which meant it spilled out of the exit wound away from King.
Whereas King fired with precision.
And blew all four rounds out the back of his target’s heads.
The staccato of gunfire faded, and the muzzle flares disappeared, and all returned to darkness and silence.
King controlled his breathing, and ticked off three tally marks in his head.
His ears whined, and his hearing dulled, and he dropped the body off his shoulder and kept low as he waited for it to return.
When it did, he heard screams to his left.
Will Slater.
Breaking bones.
He looked over and thought he saw two figures tussling, their outlines barely visible.
A moment later, one of them pushed the other to his knees and fired an execution shot.
King’s breath caught in his throat.
49
Slater started out at a slightly faster pace than his counterpart.
Call it recklessness. Call it a burning desire to get this nightmare of a situation over and done with.
Call it anything, really.
But it happened. He kept low and kept a tight grip on the Sig Sauer and ran into the first hostile only a few seconds after he set off.
Literally.
He crouch-walked straight into the guy’s hip, but the soft bump of the impact was drowned out by a particularly vicious gust of wind. So no-one heard it. Slater decided, then and there, to wait before he fired a shot.
So in one smooth motion — before the insurgent could even respond to the knock on his hip — Slater bolted upright and seized the guy in a crushing bear hug, pinning both his arms to his sides, preventing him from aiming the weapon that was more than likely resting in his own hand.
If the guy pulled the trigger, he’d probably shoot himself in the foot.
So he hesitated, and Slater headbutted him once as a test. His forehead smacked into the soft flesh above the guy’s ear, and he used the stimuli to work out which way the guy was facing, and then he spun him round and headbutted him so hard in the nose that the crack sounded like a miniature gunshot.
The guy yelled out in pain.
When he did, Slater headbutted him in the mouth, knocking a few teeth loose.
Then, satisfied that he’d stunned the man enough to create a split second of hesitation, he released the bear hug and stepped back and smashed the Sig Sauer’s stock into the guy’s forehead.
Rattling his brain.
Putting him out.
Slater caught the unconscious man, lowered him to the forest floor, and quietly smashed the stock three consecutive times into his throat.
Caving in his windpipe.
He didn’t want the man getting up to ambush him from behind.
He crept onward.
Then, far to his right, King fired a pair of shots, lighting up the forest with a strobe-like effect.
‘Shit,’ Slater whispered.
Gunshots exploded from everywhere at once, a vicious cacophony of death and destruction, and Slater narrowed his gaze to try and make out what was happening. He saw King crouched low, carrying a body over one shoulder, aiming with confidence. Then the two silhouettes closest to King jerked and spun away, lit up by the muzzle flares. Ejections of blood arced out the backs of their heads, and then the world plunged back into night.
Someone tried to seize Slater from behind.
He felt the light touch of arms about to wrap around his chest, and he jerked away like he’d been shot. Which was a good decision considering the swoosh of a machete slicing through the air where his throat had been a second earlier. He spotted the silhouette looming over him, trying to recover from the missed swing, and Slater stomped his heel into the guy’s kneecap, hyperextending it, shattering bone and tearing ligaments. The guy screamed as he went down and slashed with the machete again.
Again, it missed Slater by inches as he jerked away.
But that’s where his reaction speed came into play. He kicked the guy in the elbow, neutralising that joint too. Then he heard the distinctive sound of the guy changing hands with the knife, refusing to quit.
So be it.
Slater raised the P320 and pressed it down on the top of the guy’s skull and fired once through his brain before he could swing the blade again.
Then he hit the deck.
A moment later gunfire roared, and bullets whisked over his head, shredding the undergrowth inches above him to pieces.
He thought his heart might explode from the stress.
King, he thought, it’s now or never.
50
King was ready.
He knew it was Slater who fired the execution shot when the insurgents recognised the gunshot wasn’t one of their own, and responded accordingly. They laced the trees with bullets, but the surviving silhouette was no longer there. The guy had seemingly vanished, but King knew the truth.
No-one else could react that fast.
Which gave him confirmation that anyone still standing wasn’t Will Slater.
So he ejected the magazine that had one round left, chambered a fresh one, and let loose.
He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, aimed and fired, aimed and fired.
Four separate times in the tiny window provided by the muzzle flares.
His own bullets shredded the insurgents to pieces, dropping a trio of them where they stood. He saw blood spray and bodies collapse and then the picture cut out like someone yanking a TV cord from the socket.
Back to darkness.
King stayed low, and breathed, and tried not to focus on how badly his ankle hurt.
He stayed where he was, crouched so low his nose was almost touching the dirt, and waited for retaliatory fire.
None came.
Ste
adily, inch by inch, he rose.
And there was a small silhouette right there in his face, maybe 5’9 in height.
Definitely not Slater.
King panicked and fired twice into the darkness and missed.
He lined up a better aim and pumped the trigger once more.
Nothing.
Ten rounds in the clip.
He was empty.
The figure raised its own weapon. King had just managed to make out a snarling wide-eyed face in the brief flash of his final gunshot.
Animalistic.
Then again, this was an animalistic game.
King battered the gun aside, probably breaking a couple of the guy’s fingers in the process, using his raw strength to his advantage. He figured a hurricane of violence was necessary to ensure he didn’t catch a bullet to the face, so he thundered an uppercut into the guy’s stomach and cocked his other arm at a right-angle and used the elbow as a whip to cut a line across the guy’s forehead. Blood spurted immediately from the wound, blinding the man, and King used the opportunity to stand up and snatch hold of the arm holding the gun with both hands and bring it down on his knee, shattering the bone.
The guy grunted and dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by the pain.
King nearly took the man’s head off his shoulders with a follow-up uppercut.
It probably killed him.
He dropped low and reloaded. But he fumbled with the fresh magazine. His knuckles were aching from the two consecutive uppercuts, and he might have broken a finger in the carnage. So, in a rare moment of weakness, his fingers slipped and he had to lunge to catch it again.
Which gave him away.
The next thing he knew, there were voices all around him, whispering frantically in a foreign language. His hearing was dulled from the repetitive gunshots, but he could make out that much.
He spun and found a silhouette and slammed the fresh magazine home and fired…
Killed one man, but another one shot at him and missed.
Just.
It came horrifically close, and King instinctively spun away as he felt displaced air against the side of his neck. When he put his foot down to steady himself, his swollen ankle screamed for relief.