by Matt Rogers
When it was over, he cut the athletic tape off, then spent twenty minutes in the infrared sauna he’d constructed up the back of the gymnasium. He sweated non-stop the entire time, bathed in the red glow. Thoroughly cleansed, he stumbled to the shower, where he used a jet of ice-cold water to stop the flow of perspiration and bring his heart rate back down to a reasonable level.
When he turned the water off, he stood there naked in the marble bathroom and took a deep breath, in and out.
He emptied his mind.
It worked.
Physical exertion had always been his cure. It could silence the most terrifying demons, and if his solution to the chaos in his own head made him healthier and stronger and better and faster at the same time, then that was a sacrifice he was willing to make each and every day. Discomfort no longer played on his mind.
He lived in discomfort.
He walked naked to the bedroom and climbed under the covers, pressing himself into the memory foam. He kept the blackout blinds up for a few minutes to admire the view. It hadn’t grown old yet. He didn’t know if it ever would.
He was the one unlikely to grow old.
He drifted into an uneasy sleep, exhausted from the last twenty-four hours.
13
Jason King suffered his own turmoil as he drove the box truck through bustling New York City streets under a dawn sky.
He knew Slater had his own issues to work through.
After long and uninterrupted conversations over many nights, he’d realised their differences.
You see, Slater hadn’t been in a committed relationship for over a decade. He was the womanising type, treating sexual conquests with the same intensity that he approached the rest of his life with. King had dabbled in the same patterns early in his career, but the reason he’d pulled himself away from Black Force was to settle down with the woman he loved.
On the tropical island of Koh Tao, two men had forced their way into his villa when he wasn’t home and shot her in the head.
He’d closed that chapter of his life, and delivered vengeance on everyone involved, but the emptiness would never leave him.
He gripped the wheel and let the dark cloud encase him. He had to let it in. Keeping it at bay would drive him mad. When he was alone, he let it wash over him. Then he forced the evil away when he had to communicate with others.
But he was the solitary type, so spending most of his waking hours dwelling on the cruelness of the world wasn’t healthy.
Why did she have to pay for my mistakes?
Why wasn’t it me instead?
He knew the answer. It seemed like everyone on the planet had tried to kill him at some point in his life, but he’d mowed them down each and every time. He had the capacity to defend himself, and Klara didn’t. He’d dragged her into his world, so she’d been forced to pay the consequences.
He sighed and bowed his head to the wheel.
He wasn’t watching where he was going.
He figured if the box truck drifted off-course at top speed and slammed into a wall, he wouldn’t care…
Then he snapped himself out of it and refocused on the road.
The black boxes were in the back of the truck. There were thirty-six in total — nine per box. But King had kept one in the passenger seat, and it was sitting there now, tantalising in its mystery.
He figured he’d keep one in the back of his closet.
In case there was ever an opportunity to find out what they were.
The sun rose in all its glory, revealing a cool and bright New York day. King drove the box truck out of the city limits, heading over the Brooklyn Bridge, moving south.
On the way, he kept an eye out for any strange looks from passers-by. Gianni might have half the city’s underworld on the payroll. King had one of the Heckler & Koch rifles from the crates lying on the centre console, and he was more than ready to use it.
When he reached Flatlands, with its urban industrial sprawl, he found an empty lot wedged between two abandoned buildings and drove in like he had all the business in the world being there. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He found an open shed covered in rust, with old broken tools and plastic bottles converted into bongs and heroin needles strewn all over the floor, and drove the box truck in. The building itself was surrounded by nothing but gravel — there was no fire hazard if he torched the truck in here.
And he figured if a vagrant caught him in the act, there’d be little risk of them alerting the authorities.
No, the truck would be unrecognisable by the time anyone came across it.
King got out and withdrew the lone black box from the passenger seat. He tucked it into a canvas carry-bag, taking care not to damage it in the process, then shut the doors. He fetched three cans of gasoline from the back and poured them over every surface of the truck. Then he slipped the bag over one shoulder, pulled a lighter out of his pocket, and set the whole thing aflame.
He walked away fast, letting it burn, and the flames consumed the vehicle.
The boxes in the back, probably priceless, burned too.
He hailed a cab several blocks away from the scene and gently lowered the carry bag to the rear seats alongside him.
He gave the cab driver his address on the Upper East Side.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ the guy noted, glancing in the rear view mirror to get a better look at King.
He knew the building.
King said, ‘Had business out this way.’
‘What kind of business?’
King looked over his shoulder and saw smoke billowing from between two abandoned buildings.
There was no-one on the sidewalks.
No witnesses.
It would burn bright for half an hour before anyone came across it.
It would be a shell.
King turned back around and pressed five $100 bills into the driver’s palm.
‘The kind of business that would be better left undisclosed.’
‘Of course, sir,’ the taxi driver said. ‘I’ve been in Manhattan all morning.’
King smiled. ‘Yes, you have.’
14
Slater came awake from a knock at the front door.
He’d never been a deep sleeper — a byproduct of a life spent sleeping deep behind enemy lines, in places he had no business being, expecting an ambush.
So he woke up in a flurry and vaulted out of bed.
He might have employed more caution, but he recognised the knock.
It was almost midday, according to the digital clock on his bedside table. He slipped into underwear, a pair of athletic shorts, and a skin-tight compression shirt in his walk-in wardrobe, and went to answer the door.
He opened it to find Jason King staring at him.
‘I was sleeping,’ Slater said. ‘I needed the rest.’
‘I thought I’d drop by.’
‘Job done?’
King gestured to the carry bag hanging off his shoulder. ‘I figured we should keep one.’
Silence.
King said, ‘I wanted to see how you’d react.’
‘You know I don’t want any part of that.’
‘I didn’t take you for the superstitious type.’
‘Yeah, well…’
‘You’re paranoid. There’s no room for paranoia in this world.’
Slater glanced over King’s shoulder. ‘You want to come inside? Best we have this conversation in private.’
‘Sure.’
King stepped in, and Slater sensed the tension bristling in the air. They didn’t disagree often. When they did, it sometimes led to reckless behaviour. He remembered the last time they’d fought — on a rural track in Hungary, when King’s emotions had reached boiling point. Slater had dodged a punch, taken him down, and locked in the choke. King tapped.
They hadn’t laid a hand on each other since.
But they both knew full well that whoever got the upper hand could end the other’s life in seconds.
T
hat was the reality of their world.
Most of it was restraint.
Because the truth was, if they wanted to murder every one of Gianni’s thugs on the street last night, they could have.
But that wasn’t who they were.
They retaliated viciously when their lives were threatened, but when they were on the offensive they employed restraint.
King brushed past and swept into the living room. Slater followed.
King placed the black box gently on the floor next to the four open crates, and turned around. He didn’t seem impressed by the view, or the luxury surroundings.
No wonder — his penthouse suite was virtually identical, and the view was the same.
Slater said, ‘I don’t like this.’
‘I told you — you don’t like it because you’re superstitious. If you were in the right mindset, you’d want to keep it.’
‘What do we do with it?’
‘I’ll leave it in my closet.’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
Slater stared at King like he was an idiot. ‘You’re sleep deprived.’
‘What am I missing?’
‘How hard do you think it is to put a tracker in each of them?’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘Use your head.’
‘Destroy it, then?’
‘Probably our best bet. Which is what I’ve been saying all along. Which is what I thought you did.’
King stared at the walls, then the floor, then the view.
Then back to Slater.
He said, ‘You think they’re tracking it right now?’
‘Only one way to know for sure.’
‘Want my opinion?’ King said.
Slater said, ‘Will I care?’
The atmosphere bristled again.
King said, ‘I’m not from the nineteenth century like you think I am.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘You’re implying I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to technology.’
‘Oh,’ Slater said. ‘Didn’t know I was making it so obvious.’
The sarcasm leached through his tone.
King said, ‘They won’t be tracking the boxes themselves. Why would they put a tracker in it? They’d put it somewhere easily accessible. Somewhere that doesn’t require taking apart a priceless piece of technology to retrieve it. They’d put it in the crates, or the truck.’
‘Or nowhere at all,’ Slater said. ‘Maybe they got brazen and figured they’d reach their destination without a problem.’
‘Maybe,’ King said.
Silence.
A long, drawn-out silence.
Slater said, ‘That was a good point.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I still don’t like this.’
‘I can tell.’
‘You keep it. If anything comes from it, you’ll be the one who gets murdered in the middle of the night.’
King said, ‘I’m flattered.’
But he picked the box up with a wry smile and carried it by its thin handle to the front door.
‘You going back to sleep?’ he said.
Slater said, ‘I’ll try to.’
King paused by the door. ‘You still having dreams?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Sometimes. Not often.’
‘Then I guess one of us got lucky, huh?’
King said, ‘Look, Will… if you want out, then get out. This can’t be helping your headspace. I’m doing this because I want to, and because it’s the only thing that makes me forget about Klara. The stress and the intensity and the violence… it suppresses my issues. But if that’s what triggers your issues, then maybe this path isn’t what you need.’
‘I appreciate the armchair psychology,’ Slater said, ‘but I’ll be fine.’
‘You sure?’
Slater waved a hand around the apartment. ‘You think I have any reason to complain? Look at where we are. Look at what we do. We help people. And we have our health.’
‘Our physical health, maybe,’ King said. Then he reached out and tapped a single finger against the side of Slater’s head. ‘This is what I’m worried about.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll attack it like I attack all my other problems. I’ll sort myself out.’
‘Is it because of what we do?’ King said. ‘Or is it because of what happened in New Zealand?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’ll figure it out.’
‘I hope so.’
King shifted the black box in his grip and nodded down to it. ‘I’ll take care of this. Sorry I interrupted your sleep. I should have waited.’
‘I appreciate you running it by me.’
‘What happens now?’ King said. ‘We got no answers. Do we go back for Gianni?’
‘I have a gut feeling that he’s already been taken care of.’
‘What do you mean?’
Slater pointed at the black box. ‘Those were incredibly important, and they were being delivered on behalf of the Whelans.’
‘Who?’
‘A crime family here in New York. I’ve had a run-in with them in the past.’
‘Of course you have. Is that where we go next?’
Slater shrugged. ‘I caught them by surprise last time. From what I hear, they went to ground. They don’t flaunt their riches in public anymore. They’re spread out — tactical. I don’t think it’ll be as easy to assault them as last time.’
‘But now there’s two of us.’
Slater sighed. ‘Maybe. Then what? We take down all organised crime in the city? Not much chance of that happening.’
‘One step at a time. We haven’t been vigilantes for long. We need to build momentum.’
‘So we start smaller than the Whelans.’
‘We just did.’
Slater paused. ‘Time to take things to the next level?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sleep first,’ Slater said. ‘Then we’ll discuss going after the Whelans.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
King closed the door behind him, and Slater padded back to bed and returned to his slumber. The blackout blinds were down, and it didn’t take him long to drift off.
But the whole time he dreamt about guns and knives and fists and blood and bullets.
And it didn’t excite him like it used to.
15
King unlocked the door to his own penthouse, and slipped inside.
It was a mirror image of Slater’s. The same furniture, arranged in the same positions, with slight variations in colour and size. But neither of them had any interest in interior design, so they’d hired a firm to fit out the properties on an equally extravagant budget.
Design was not their specialty, so they outsourced it.
As they outsourced nearly everything in their life.
So they could concentrate every waking moment on doing what they do best.
Fighting.
King’s muscles throbbed from throwing maximum output strikes against Gianni’s thugs. They hadn’t landed a blow, but that didn’t matter. Slamming home an elbow with the power he could generate disrupted the muscle fascia, and made his bones ache, and rattled his central nervous system. He felt a thousand pound weight on his shoulders. Thankfully, he’d learnt to deal with it. He’d seen it all before. He placed the box on the floor near the entranceway, ensured all three of the security locks on his front door were firmly in place, and sauntered through to the open plan living area.
He was tired, too.
He had to admit it.
He crossed to the Eames chair in the corner and stretched out on it, folding his hands behind his head. He exhaled all the turbulence of the previous night. There was uncertainty, sure, but there’d always been uncertainty. He didn’t know what they’d be doing in twenty-four hours time. He’d never had this much freedom. The military was structured, and his post-military career had been whimsical, floating fr
om one confrontation to the next. This was different. This was a focused ploy to target the worst scum in New York City.
It was like they were running their own covert division, in a way.
Without the manpower.
So they were stumbling around in the dark.
King closed his eyes and thought long and hard about that. When he opened them, something glinted out the window.
His heart rate spiked and his adrenaline flared. He threw himself off the chair, overturning it in the process, and landed on his stomach. He pressed himself to the cool ground and scrambled in a crab crawl for the kitchen island a couple of dozen feet away. When he made it to the giant bulletproof husk and threw himself behind it, he opened and closed his mouth in an attempt to control his breathing.
There’s a shooter out there.
You were in his sights.
He was ready to kill. If someone came through the door right now, he’d rip them apart with his bare hands. He was sure of it. His chest heaved, rising and falling, and the back part of his brain took over. It snarled, Fight. Kill. Win.
Then he slowed his breathing down.
And he peered over the countertop.
And he realised it was the sun, reflecting off the floor-to-ceiling windows in a certain way.
He closed his eyes and slid back down onto his rear. He touched the back of his neck to the kitchen island. It came away sticky. Wet with perspiration.
He clambered to his feet, looked all around, and shook his head.
‘Fuck,’ he said to himself. ‘Maybe you’ve got your own problems to work through.’
He stumbled to the bedroom and fell asleep, drenched in sweat.
16
A phone rang in the kitchen.
Slater’s phone.
He rubbed his eyes and groaned in protest. He reached over and stabbed a button on the bedside table, and the blinds lifted.
It was dark.
He rubbed his eyes again, and shook away the tendrils of deep, all-encompassing sleep.