by Matt Rogers
His vision was reeling this way and that. He wasn’t unconscious, but he might as well have been. With his equilibrium firmly disrupted and his muscles pleading for mercy, he kicked and flailed on the concrete like a fish out of water.
And he was forced to listen to the horrifying sounds of two men fighting to the death.
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Slater took longer than usual to react.
He saw something on the laptop that really shouldn’t have been there. He read the file name, blinked, and read it again just to make sure.
Then there was a moment of hesitation as his brain connected the dots.
He thought, Are you fucking kidding me?
Then there was an explosion of sudden violent movement — a hurricane of noise — and when he looked up King was on the floor and Perry was halfway through the process of pivoting toward him. One of the bodyguard’s hands was on the way down to his waistband.
That was all Slater needed to see.
He tensed up and utilised a surge of adrenaline and literally threw the whole table at Perry. It was a small round circular thing, but it was still made of sturdy wood and heavy enough to pack a punch. The laptop flew off the surface and smashed against the far wall and the three table legs hit Perry in the chest. Something cracked in the man’s sternum, and the blunt force of the impact sent him stumbling back across the room.
Slater went for his gun but it wasn’t there.
He remembered feeling something tickling his waist back in the chopper, but the whole flight had been a blur of fatigue and exhaustion. If Perry had lifted his weapon off him before even arriving in Lukla, then the bodyguard was more brazen than he thought. It didn’t gel with Slater’s usual situational awareness, but he recognised that had been thrown out the window when his body shut down. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he remembered feeling the Sig Sauer at his waist.
For all he knew, it was resting in the dirt of the heli field, discreetly discarded when they all slipped out of the chopper.
Then he worked out where it was all at once, because both of Perry’s hands flew to his waist.
He had both guns.
Slater didn’t hesitate to wonder how, or why, or what. He just flipped a switch in his brain and lunged across the room like a man possessed. He got his hands on Perry at the same moment the bodyguard ripped both P320s from his belt.
But by that point Slater had momentum on his side, and he used another savage burst of intensity to pivot and tense and squeeze and throw.
Perry went airborne, bounced like a rag doll off the concrete wall, and sprawled in a heap onto one of the thin mattresses.
The guns went everywhere, skittering around the room.
Slater thought about lunging for one, but there was no guarantee they were ready to fire. Instead he took advantage of a disorientated enemy and leapt onto Perry, pressing all his weight on top of the bodyguard. As soon as Perry lifted his head to break free of the crushing pressure, Slater would loop an arm around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.
Jiu-jitsu 101.
But Perry didn’t do that, because he was obviously a trained combatant himself.
Instead he tucked his chin to his chest and pushed off the mattress and sent them both tumbling to the floor.
Slater landed on top of King, who groaned in protest. He had no time to check on his friend’s condition — everything was a fast-paced blur, and concentration was impossible — so he rolled off King and tried to get to his feet.
Perry lunged into range, got both hands around Slater’s mid-section, and locked them together.
‘Fuck,’ Slater snarled.
He smashed an open palm down, catching Perry in the nose. The appendage broke, and blood sprayed. Then Slater used the same arm to drop an elbow into the soft flesh behind the man’s ear. It was a brutal strike, like a blunt axe ricocheting off a coconut, but Perry didn’t go out. He stumbled, wobbled, but kept his grip tight.
Then he picked Slater up and dumped him down on his head.
Slater tucked his chin to his chest at the last second, and came down on the concrete on the base of his neck. Then all Perry’s weight crushed on top of him, driving him harder into the floor. A wave of nausea rippled through him and as he broke free of the man’s grasp he fought the urge to vomit. But he simply couldn’t afford to, no matter how hurt he was. Anyone who stayed still for longer than a second was going to get beaten to death.
Perry swung with a looping right hook and missed, and Slater thought, Now.
He dove on Perry, who’d overcommitted with the punch, and wrestled him down to his knees. Then he interlocked his fingers behind the man’s skull and crushed his face with a scything knee.
Thwack.
Right into the broken nose.
Blood sprayed again, this time coating both Slater and King, and Slater followed up with another knee to the same spot. The results were gnarly, and the extent of the damage made Slater hesitate as he figured out exactly how to kill Oscar Perry with his bare hands. Really, it was only half a second of decision-making, unnoticeable to the untrained observer, but Perry noticed.
And he was a tough son-of-a-bitch.
Because he ignored his broken nose and shattered face and ducked his head low, breaking free of the Muay Thai clinch. He backed away, still on his knees, and dove for one of the guns.
Slater dove for Perry.
Another impact, just as brutal as the last.
The crash-tackle took them both into the side of the nearest bed frame, and the impact stunned them both. Either man could capitalise on the narrow window, and Slater tried to, but—
He was a few milliseconds too late.
Perry seized the leverage and scrambled on top of Slater, distributing all his weight evenly. Slater tried to gouge an eye but Perry dropped a devastating elbow. It sliced across the top of Slater’s forehead, and suddenly all he could see was blood. He tried to fight through the crimson mask, but it was futile. He felt crushing pressure on either side of his head, and realised Perry had seized hold of his skull.
The bodyguard smashed Slater’s head into one of the metal legs.
He lost sensation in his hands and feet.
He was on the verge of unconsciousness.
About to slip into a long and dreamless—
Then the hands fell away. Suddenly Perry’s weight pressing down on him was nowhere to be found, and Slater took the opportunity to reach up and wipe the blood out of his eyes.
He blinked twice, and saw Perry scrambling for the nearest weapon.
But he didn’t get there in time.
Jason King, gun in hand, strode up to Oscar Perry, seized him by his curly blond hair, wrenched him away from the nearest handgun, and placed the barrel against his head.
Perry’s face contorted into a grimace and he squeezed his eyes shut. ‘No, no, no, please—’
King pulled the trigger.
The gunshot exploded in the confined space.
Then the room went quiet.
Slater lay on his back, panting, bleeding, his head throbbing. There was blood everywhere. On the walls, on the mattress, on the floor. All over King.
King surveyed the scene, unblinking, wide-eyed. Probably in shock.
He let the chaos settle, then turned to Slater and said, ‘What just happened?’
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King caught his breath.
It was difficult, but he managed.
As soon as he’d crawled out of the semi-conscious state, he was free to move. Like a boxer recovering before the ten count, he’d clawed his way back to reality, got to his feet, picked up a gun, and put a bullet through Perry’s head.
Now he stumbled over to Slater and helped the man to his feet.
Slater got up on shaky legs, clutching his forehead to stem the bleeding, and sat down on the mattress.
Wordlessly, King went into his duffel bag and retrieved the medkit. He eyed the staple gun, but Slater hissed, ‘No.’
‘I
t might be for the best.’
‘It’s not that deep. Just tape it up.’
‘If you say so.’
King swabbed the cut with rubbing alcohol, then pinched it closed for a long thirty-count, and finished by winding a long unbroken strip of medical tape around Slater’s head several times in a row. When he taped it in place, it looked like a makeshift headband.
Slater said, ‘That’s fine. It’ll do until we’re out of here.’
‘What was that?’
‘We probably don’t have time to talk about it,’ Slater said, getting to his feet.
‘Why?’
‘Because Perry and whoever else he’s working with have at least three soldiers in his back pocket.’
‘Wha—?’ King started, and then trailed off.
“It’s fine,” Perry had said.
The troops on the staircase had listened.
He’d given them the all-clear, and they’d let him go.
‘What the hell is going on?’ King muttered to himself.
‘I think I’m putting it together,’ Slater said. ‘But we just fired an unsuppressed round in a civilian lodge. We need to go — right now.’
Sure enough, they made out distant screams echoing down the corridors. They hadn’t been paying attention to them before, but now they were prevalent.
‘After you,’ King said, throwing the duffel over his shoulder.
Slater picked up his own pack, then the three guns. He passed one to King, and tucked the other two in his own waistband. King eyed the shattered laptop warily, and Slater shook his head.
‘We don’t need it,’ he said.
‘Why not? Wouldn’t it be evidence?’
‘I don’t want it to be evidence.’
‘Why?’
‘Best they think no one knows. Best they think no one’s coming for them. But we’ll be coming for them. When we get out of here.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I still haven’t figured it all out. Let’s go. We’ll talk when we’re safe.’
Both covered in blood, both walking on shaky legs, both disorientated, they stumbled straight out of the room, leaving Perry’s body for the cleaners.
‘Where do we go?’ King said, flashing paranoid glances left and right.
Sure enough, an older Caucasian woman threw her bedroom door open, saw them both striding down the hall, screamed at the top of her lungs, and disappeared back inside her room.
Slater said, ‘Airport.’
‘We’ll be sitting ducks out there.’
‘Would you prefer the trail?’
‘Probably.’
‘We’ll get overwhelmed, and you know it. There’s a whole lot of places to ambush us out there, and they don’t have to pretend to be courteous anymore. The game is over. We need to be back in Kathmandu as fast as humanly possible.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘But first, Phaplu.’
King remembered the airport in the village they’d set off from. ‘We can fly there if we—’
‘Yeah.’
King thought about it. ‘You want to get Parker?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Care to elaborate?’
‘Not yet. I’m working it out.’
King was about to press the issue, but they made it to the teahouse’s entrance and suddenly there were five or six people in their face, screaming at them. Most of them were Nepali, with the odd weary trekker thrown into the mix. King shouldered his way past all of them and went straight out the front door. Slater followed in his stride.
Then they were jogging down cobblestone streets, steadily descending toward the airport, their eyes peeled for any sign of danger. They passed local after local, who stared at them like they were aliens.
Finally, Slater said, ‘Fuck this,’ and wrenched the Sig Sauer from his belt.
King followed suit.
They barely noticed civilians scattering, because by that point their visions had constricted to twin tunnels. They ran at breakneck speed through Lukla, weaving left and right in a hopeless attempt to make it to the airport before anyone in the town realised they had a situation on their hands.
King saw Slater wrench the satellite phone free and dial a number.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, his heart in his throat.
‘Making a call,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got every insurgent in the mountains looking for us, but I think I can get the army off our backs.’
‘How?’
Slater pulled to a halt in the lee of an archway and sucked in the cool mountain air.
King stopped alongside him, patiently waiting.
‘Parker,’ Slater said into the phone. ‘It’s Will. We have Raya. We have your daughter. Find somewhere secluded in Phaplu to meet us, and call me back. Somewhere away from civilians. We’re going to be coming in hot.’
King inched closer to the receiver, and thought he heard the faint words, Let me speak to her.
‘Okay,’ Slater said, and mimed taking the phone away from his ear. ‘Raya, here’s—’
He hung up.
He said, ‘That should give us the window we need to get out of this place.’
King stared at the phone. ‘What if he has nothing to do with this?’
‘Huh?’
‘What if he’s innocent? You just gave him false hope that his daughter’s alive.’
‘He’s not fucking innocent,’ Slater snarled.
‘Care to enlighten me as to what was on that laptop?’
Slater paused, and bowed his head.
Then he looked up and said, ‘A spreadsheet of payments from a dozen special risks insurers, totalling tens of millions of dollars. And it seemed like that was just deposits. Like the real payout would come later.’
King didn’t answer.
He wasn’t entirely lucid.
He knew that was bad.
He just didn’t know why.
He said, ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means Aidan Parker’s in bed with them. It means he knew about Mukta before his daughter was taken.’
King tried to piece it together.
But he couldn’t quite connect all the dots.
Then a raucous group of hikers rounded the corner a dozen feet in front of them, gesticulating to each other and speaking rapid Spanish back and forth.
One of them — deeply tanned, in his early thirties, with a full head of straight black hair — stared a little too long.
King and Slater stared back.
Then the guy looked over his shoulder, back into the alleyway they’d just come from, and shouted in broken English, ‘Down here! They here! Come quick!’
The trekkers scattered, and King dropped to one knee and took aim with his Sig.
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Slater, on the other hand, wasn’t about to wait for the firefight to come to them.
As soon as he registered the Spanish guy yelling, he took off at a sprint for the mouth of the alley. He screeched to a halt on the path and found three men in camouflage fatigues working handguns free from leather holsters on their belts.
More insurgents.
They were already in Lukla.
Already searching for King and Slater.
Slater controlled the initial panic response, exhaled fully, and lined up his aim. Then he pumped the trigger three times.
Thwack-thwack-thwack.
Heads snapped back on shoulders, exit wounds sprayed blood on the cobblestones, and nearby trekkers and locals screamed bloody murder as the ballet of violence unfolded in front of them.
Which was accurate enough.
It was bloody, and it was murder.
Slater yelled, ‘Come on!’
King got to his feet and hurried after him. As soon as Slater knew King was on his tail, he broke into a sprint for the airport. Shouts and screams spread through the town like wildfire, and it wouldn’t be long before most of the residents realised war had broken out on home soil. Then there would be
bedlam, accompanied swiftly by the closure of the airport. There was no way they could get their hands on a plane if everything was locked and the keys were thrown away.
No, they had to run for their lives and hope that—
Slater rounded a corner and saw the tiny airport through its surrounding wire fence. There was a small passenger plane idling in one of the four loading bays, capable of carrying no more than twenty passengers in total, and a thin queue bleeding out of the three-storey building that passed for a terminal. The trekkers had been lining up to board, but the gunshots rippling through the village froze them in their tracks. Now they were staring up the hill, mouths agape, whispering nervously to one another.
A handful of them saw Slater’s outline through the fence, gun in hand, and pandemonium erupted.
Everyone scattered — passengers and workers alike.
Slater saw the small plane’s propellers powering down.
‘Shit,’ he yelled.
King skidded to a halt beside him. ‘What?’
‘Over the fence. Now.’
King clearly had enough experience in trying times to need no further prompting. He heard the urgency in Slater’s tone and moved immediately. He dropped his duffel bag and hauled himself over the wire fence, nearly falling head over heels down the other side in his haste. He landed hard on the thin ledge, narrowly avoiding a two-storey drop to the tarmac. The fence had been erected at the top of a sheer rock wall, and they’d need to traverse it with caution if they wanted to keep their bones intact on the descent.
Slater tossed King’s bag over, followed by his own. Then he vaulted over the fence, landed in a similar heap, and picked himself up to observe the scene.
The passengers were scattering in a dozen different directions — some racing back into the safety of the terminal, others opting to flee at breakneck speed across the three empty loading bays. It was understandable — they thought they were under attack.
Then a couple of security guards stuck their heads out of the terminal, far across the tarmac.
Slater thought he saw the glint of gunmetal.
He raised the Sig Sauer and fired three shots over the roof of the building, making sure the bullets sailed harmlessly out of Lukla.