Rogues: A King & Slater Thriller

by Matt Rogers

  Ronan already knew that was what it had to be. There was no conceivable way he would’ve still been alive and unable to access a phone. Not even if he was captured. No one could hold Brad Forrest — a mountain of a man and one of the most dangerous operators Ronan had ever met — down for long.

  The sorrow hit him like a punch to the chest.

  The only man who’d ever been good for him.

  Gone.

  Arnold said, ‘So is Connor.’

  Ronan tried his hardest to seem understanding. ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  It sounded too forced, but at least he’d made the effort.

  Arnold said, ‘You want to know who did it?’

  Ronan’s heart went into palpitations. He composed himself. ‘What, who killed your buddy?’

  ‘Who killed them both. Connor and Brad. It’s the same people responsible for both. They beat Brad to death in El Salvador. Left his brutalised corpse next to some ancient ruins. My higher-ups only just managed to get the body retrieved. And I’ve been doing my own research with the tools available to me. These same guys who killed your buddy, they tore that Mother Libertas cult apart in Wyoming. It exposed Connor. He was just a naïve and impressionable drug addict who got sucked down the wrong path, and when my superiors found out they executed the kid.’

  Ronan’s world narrowed to a tunnel. That was easy, because there was nothing of worth in his life. He sensed an opportunity dawning, a chance to channel every ounce of his old abilities into the possibility of vengeance. The idea stirred him in a way that nothing had for more than a decade. He saw himself from a distance, a third-person perspective, as a phoenix.

  Shaking off years and years of ashes to finally rise.

  He said, ‘Are you sure about all this?’

  ‘I did some digging of my own. Before this last week, I’d never done anything my superiors would disapprove of. Too afraid of them, what they might find out, what they might do. But I wrote half the code they use to keep tabs on their workers in the first place. Who surveils the ones who create the surveillance technology?’

  ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘Well, I realised I could sneak my way around the archives without anyone being the wiser. So I went looking for anything I could find, and you know what I found?’

  Ronan said nothing. He hated rhetorical questions.

  ‘Jason King,’ Arnold said after a beat, ‘and Will Slater.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They used to do what you did in Afghanistan. Well, maybe not everything. You took things a little far, you and Brad and Otis. While I was digging I found the report on that, too, by the way. You never told me about that, you dirty dog. Blows my mind your higher-ups let that slide, the excursion into that village…’

  Ronan’s blood ran cold. So they knew.

  They always knew.

  They just didn’t care.

  Arnold said, ‘Anyway, back to the point. King. Slater. They’re probably the most successful covert operatives in history. They’re out now, off causing trouble somewhere, pushing the wrong buttons. Some higher-up sent Brad’s entire team of hunters after them. You know about them, right?’

  Ronan did. Brad had told him about them. Brad had ascended to the highest level of ops a couple of years ago, becoming a hunter. They were the cream of the crop, the most efficient and lethal operators in the country. They all used gemstones as their callsigns.

  Brad’s was “Diamond.”

  Ronan said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘King and Slater killed every single one of them last week. The handler, Onyx, committed suicide when he sensed how badly he’d failed. A kid I should’ve helped, Connor … he paid the price, too. And you want to know what I found next, after I dug in the places I wasn’t allowed to dig?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ronan said. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I found a direct order from the very top, a moratorium. A message that simply said, “Stand down.” They caved, Ronan. The government, the secret world … they all caved because they’re scared of these two clowns.’

  Ronan stewed silently.

  Arnold said, ‘Are you scared of them? Two men, flesh and blood.’

  ‘No.’

  Ronan truthfully wasn’t. It wasn’t like he had anything left to live for, anyway.

  Besides vengeance.

  Arnold said, ‘Me either. And I don’t want to listen to my bosses anymore. I can get my hands on any intel I want, important information concerning their recent whereabouts. It’s clear King and Slater have got someone helping them, someone who does what I do, because they’re digital ghosts. But I know how to get data in ways that most people couldn’t dream of. I’ll find them. However long it takes.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘And when I do, you’ll be ready?’

  Ronan sniffed, wiped his nose, looked around. Felt his heart thudding in his chest. He’d need time to clean his life up, sort himself out, refresh the old skillset. He knew it was there, though, resting dormant under the surface, itching for the chance to be reawakened.

  He said, ‘Yeah. I’ll be ready.’

  ‘Good.’ Arnold exhaled, relieved he had the green light. ‘Then let’s do something about these motherfuckers.’

  48

  Present day…

  King listened to the tale in exasperated silence.

  When Ronan finally wound his way down , King said, ‘Ronan, this is ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I defended myself from a man who came after my pregnant partner and I. I understand he was doing his job, but I was doing mine as a father.’

  ‘Your job?!’ Ronan snarled. ‘You’re supposedly the most lethal man on the planet. If you wanted him alive, you could’ve run.’

  Twisted and infantile logic, but with his family held hostage King was forced to retort. ‘We did run. You think I was visiting El Salvador recreationally? The SAC attacked our home in Vegas, forced us to flee. We travelled to the Northern Triangle for refuge, but I’m sure you know that. It would’ve been in the files this Arnold character dredged up. We went to bunker down with an operative named Antônia, a friend of a friend’s, but it turned out she was a hunter like Diam—Brad. We were trying to live our lives and bury our pasts but we were forced back into the fight through no choice of our own. Brad’s the one who took the risk coming after us, when all we wanted was to be left alone. You can’t hold a grudge about that.’

  ‘Who are you to say what I’m allowed to hold a grudge about?’ Ronan spat. ‘You beat him like a dog. You left him unrecognisable. All you had to do was put a bullet in his head, but no, you made it personal.’

  ‘You don’t know the truth, Ronan.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘You won’t believe me. Because I didn’t believe it myself.’

  ‘Isn’t that convenient?’

  ‘Not for me. I wish it were something easier to swallow.’

  ‘Go on, then. Do your best.’

  ‘If you knew him as well as you claim to, you’d have known about his obsession with stoicism.’

  Silence from Ronan’s end. It revealed a steady realisation that King was probably telling the truth.

  King said, ‘He could’ve shot me. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had an empty AK and he had an empty MEU(SOC). We thought we were both out. We met each other in the middle of no-man’s-land in the pouring rain and he reached behind his back and produced a full mag. Seven .45 ACP cartridges. A single round could’ve blown my head off. Then he threw the mag away. He could’ve gunned me down where I stood but he didn’t. He recited a quote afterwards: “You are entitled to the work, never its reward.” Did he ever mention that to you? I hope so, ’cause that’ll make this easier to believe, easier to swallow.’

  Ronan had lapsed into unnerving quiet.

  ‘Brad wanted to fight,’ King said. ‘He wanted to test himself against me, man to man, warrior to warrior. No external factors. No tricks, no threats, no one in the line of fire but us. I could’ve mad
e a break for the mag he’d tossed away, tried to snatch it up, but I appeased him. I fought him the way he wanted, because in a way I respected it. I respected him, just the way you do.’

  A long pause, then, ‘You’re full of shit.’

  ‘What, he never spoke to you about stoicism? From what I saw, he embodied it.’

  ‘He mentioned a few things. But he would never throw his gun away, would never waste an opportunity to get the fucking job done.’

  ‘He wouldn’t?’ King said. ‘Or you wouldn’t, and you’re just projecting?’

  Slater vehemently shook his head, but by that point King was already halfway through the insult.

  Too late.

  Ronan digested the words. ‘There you go again. The fucking nerve of you to speak from your high horse.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ King said. ‘You honestly don’t think I held him down and beat him to death when I could have put a bullet in his head? You said you’d read my files, and Slater’s. When have we ever caused extraneous suffering? We do what we have to, either because we were employed to do so or because we felt compelled as vigilantes. But it’s always quick. We try not to make anyone hurt unnecessarily. Especially not Brad. You don’t understand it because you can’t see yourself doing something like that, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. That doesn’t mean you need to trap our families in a basement and—’

  ‘Well, that’s what’s happening,’ Ronan barked into the receiver, voice distorting. Just as King suspected — using anger to suppress his errors in judgment. If he stopped and looked at this objectively, he’d see there was no justification for his rage. But that’d humiliate him, which wasn’t an option for a spineless man. ‘I’m glad we talked for so long, because at some point you might’ve hoped you could weasel your way out of the inevitable. That makes me happy.’

  Police lights flared and a siren wailed. A Boston PD cruiser flashed past, surging deeper into the heart of the city. Both King and Slater flinched, but the show wasn’t for them. Even Ronan paused, hearing it in the background of the call.

  When it faded into nothingness, Ronan fell into instruction. ‘The pair of you will come to Dogtown. Tonight. You won’t bring guns, or knives, and when you get there you won’t use your fists or your feet. If you mount anything close to resistance while delivering yourselves to me, I’ll blow your women and your children away. I’ve done that sort of thing before, so I know I’m capable of it. I don’t say that to brag, or to instil fear. I only say it so you know I’m not bluffing. You might think I don’t have it in me, but I assure you I do.’

  ‘Dogtown?’ King said. ‘The abandoned settlement?’

  ‘You got it. The ghost town on Cape Ann from the 1800s. That’s where we’ll be waiting. I’ll give you two hours.’

  ‘While you’re waiting, you’d better ask your buddy why he killed Troy.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Ronan roared, so loud through the speaker that King almost flinched. ‘I make the demands.’

  ‘Do you?’ King said. ‘Because I’m about to give you a demand, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Do I need to remind you—?’

  ‘No,’ King interjected. ‘You don’t. Now here’s my demand, which is actually more of a heads-up. We’ll need longer than two hours. You’ll have to wait a while, but we’ll be there.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ King said, so firmly that Ronan actually did, probably out of shock. ‘While you’re sitting in that dark little village, I want you to think long and hard about what happens if you push that button. You think it gives you power over us, but in reality it’s the opposite. You’re now tied to that detonator. If you decide to blow the bomb, then you’ll have nothing to hold over us anymore. You’ll turn us into primal fucking murderers if you wipe out our families, and then we’ll use every facet of our skillsets to hunt you down and make your hurt with methods we’ve never dared inflict on anybody. Think about that, Ronan.’

  ‘Do you honestly think—?’

  ‘You’re a weak little boy,’ King said, slow and controlled. ‘And you really should’ve thought this through. Now sit tight. We’re coming.’

  He killed the call.

  Only then did he notice his pounding heart, his heavy breathing, the sweat at his temples. Rage seethed through him, fearsome and intoxicating.

  In the sudden stillness of the cabin, Slater said, ‘What did you just do?’

  49

  No sooner had Slater posed the question than he lurched into gear.

  King hadn’t elected to grace him with an answer.

  Slater called Alonzo. ‘You’ve got competition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know anyone from work named Arnold?’

  ‘What work? Arnold who?’

  ‘Your old work. I don’t have a last name.’

  Hesitation. ‘No Arnolds in my division. But the secret intelligence community is mammoth. I was in New York with the specialists, but the majority of them were down in D.C. I’m sure he was there. Buried in some obscure and opaque department.’

  ‘Is it feasible that — if he had access to the right information — he could’ve given these guys who are hunting us everything they were after?’

  ‘That depends very much on who he is. There are levels.’

  ‘The guy we just spoke to made Arnold sound like a big deal, and I’m inclined to believe that he is. Everything they’ve said they’re going to do, they’ve done.’

  ‘You should know that the security cameras around the safe house are offline. All of them.’

  Slater sighed. ‘I figured.’

  ‘You figured? You knew something was wrong? I just pulled the damn feed up, man. You could’ve told me sooner and I could’ve done something about—’

  ‘We just got off the phone with the ringleader behind all this. Ronan. No way to know whether it’s his real name or not. He’s sealed Violetta and Alexis and the kids inside that basement apartment and put eight pounds of Semtex on the door. He’s expropriated the cameras and is now using them for his own benefit, and if he spots us on the feed he’ll blow the bomb.’

  ‘Eight pounds,’ Alonzo said. ‘Fuck. You remember the Lockerbie disaster? The plane that blew up over Scotland and killed nearly three hundred people? That was eight pounds of Semtex. He’ll level the building, not just the basement.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Slater said, curt. ‘We’ve got a little experience in this world, Alonzo. We understand the severity.’

  He gave Alonzo everything else they had. Details Ronan had provided about the last decade of his life, the vague reference to some atrocity in Afghanistan, the name “Brad Forrest,” the lack of power and cell service on Marlborough Street, Ronan’s demand to meet in Dogtown, the way King had pushed back and bought them precious time.

  Alonzo said, ‘Leave it with me. At the very least I can get the cell towers back online so you can speak to the girls. And I can figure out if Arnold’s still employed by the secret world. If he is, all it’s going to take is an anonymous tip and the government will tear him limb-from-limb for doing this.’ A pause, then, ‘I thought they put a moratorium on anything to do with you or King.’

  ‘They did,’ Slater said. ‘That was part of Ronan’s story. This Arnold guy, he thinks his employers are spineless cowards. He’s taken matters into his own hands. He has access to everything the government has on us.’

  ‘Then it probably wasn’t hard to find you. Not after San Francisco. You left, what, nearly twenty dead? There would’ve been at least one eyewitness report that didn’t make the news. That sort of thing makes its way to the right pair of eyes, regardless of whether the intelligence community is searching for you or not. They could’ve traced it to the carnage you’ve caused in Boston over the last few months, narrowed their parameters to Winthrop.’

  ‘So they’ve known where we were this whole time?’ Slater said. ‘They just refused to bite?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe no
t. No way to know for sure. Sounds like Arnold’s extremely motivated. He probably dug up more than his superiors simply because he wanted to find you, and they didn’t.’

  ‘He’s motivated, alright. You remember before we broke you out of that black site in New York we were in Wyoming, destroying that cult?’

  ‘Mother Libertas,’ Alonzo said. ‘I remember.’

  ‘That kid Connor I told you about was their intelligence community contact. They got him hooked on their drug, Bodhi, and he did anything they wanted. Including tracking us, figuring out where we’d come from. He found out we were living in Vegas, and the black-ops hunters wanted us, so they offed him when he spilled the beans. Arnold knew the kid, felt responsible for his death. When Arnold and Ronan started sharing stories, finding mutual territory, it was the perfect storm of hate.’

  ‘Christ. The perfect storm.’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘That we can’t expect to live our lives undisturbed when we make as many enemies as we do.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Alonzo said, ‘because that goes without saying.’

  Slater absorbed the words, understood their true meaning.

  There’ll never be total escape.

  Alonzo said, ‘Dogtown? That’s where Ronan wants to meet?’

  ‘Yeah. King’s heard of it. I haven’t.’

  ‘Just pulled it up. Does he think you’re afraid of ghosts or something? Viable to get spooked?’

  ‘I doubt it. Why?’

  ‘It’s some abandoned settlement from the 1800s, in the woods on Cape Ann. There’s historical rumours of witchcraft, giant wolves, feral dogs, wandering spirits…’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me that he chose it. He sounded like an oddball.’

  ‘Did you delay him so you unsettle him, make him wait?’

  Slater glanced over. ‘Can’t speak for King, but I imagine he did that so we can plan our attack properly.’

  ‘You said there’s probably just two of them left.’