Weapons

by Matt Rogers

  One of the figures said, ‘A fucking developer? Really? I thought you said there’d be no problems.’

  ‘I paid them off,’ a voice moaned.

  The guy sounded genuinely distressed.

  As if he was realising what had to happen.

  One of the Geosphere guys, King noted.

  Another said, ‘We don’t need to kill him, do we?’

  ‘You thin-skinned bitch,’ a gruff voice said. ‘All this computer shit you’re doing — you know how many people you’re about to kill with that?’

  ‘Yeah, but...’

  ‘But you want to be detached from it, don’t you?’

  ‘I mean—’

  ‘You don’t want to see the consequences of your actions, you spineless fuck.’

  ‘You want to get paid? Then stop throwing around insults. You work for us.’

  ‘You hired us to do what’s needed to protect you. Now we’re doing it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  King let his disguise slip momentarily, so he could look around the room. As he suspected, four of the eight were gruff ex-military types, precisely the type of guns-for-hire that had ambushed him in his penthouse. They were easy to recruit, usually desperate for work, and had the past training to be put to good use. But they weren’t wielding HK417s, and they didn’t have M-1 Minimore claymores set up around the townhouses, and they didn’t have their special black boxes.

  King had stripped that from them, as he’d strip everything from them…

  One of the gruff ex-military types said, ‘If you don’t want to watch, then don’t watch.’

  A soft, eerie voice — a new voice — said, ‘I will take them away.’

  King fought to see through the tears that were entirely necessary to his performance.

  He saw a small Asian man with ramrod straight posture and eyes like thunder, watching him like a hawk.

  King’s breath caught in his throat.

  Is this…?

  The Asian man gestured for the Geosphere crew to follow him. They were all white and nervous and fidgety and uncomfortable, with dark bags under their eyes, indicating long-term lack of sleep.

  Wall Street, King thought.

  The suits shuffled out of the room with trepidation, some of them glancing back at King on their way out. He thought a couple of them might have felt genuine concern for him.

  Don’t feel sorry for me, he thought. Feel sorry for your friends that I’m about to kill.

  He took his gaze away from them, and in his peripheral vision saw the Asian man shuffle out of the room too. Like he was coddling his clients. Babysitting them. Making sure it was all okay. And no wonder. The success of his operation relied on three men who’d abandoned their families to see the job through. Sure, they were brilliant, and sure, they were morally bankrupt, but there was a shred of humanity still left in them.

  Not so much for the four men that stood over him. King knew their types. They’d been permanently scarred and traumatised by their stints overseas, as so many had, and their goodwill had been beaten and battered and shot out of them. And they’d returned home to a country that was indifferent to their future, and that led to places like this.

  One of the big thugs snatched a handful of King’s hair and yanked him up to his knees.

  It hurt like hell.

  King showed it on his face.

  The big man slapped him on the cheek, hard enough to redden the skin instantly, and King felt the left side of his face go numb.

  Now, the seeds of genuine panic stirred.

  This guy was strong.

  The big bearded man scratched the scar on his left cheek with grimy fingernails and said, ‘Go get the silencer.’

  ‘Just fuckin’ beat him to death,’ a second man said.

  The bearded guy looked up, grinning. ‘You think?’

  King went stone-faced.

  One of them noticed.

  The other three didn’t.

  The guy up the back who realised what was happening stiffened up. He started to open his mouth, but King cut him off.

  King said, ‘You really shouldn’t have told me that.’

  There wasn’t a shred of fear in his voice.

  The bearded guy looked down. ‘What the fuck you sayin’, boy?’

  But all of them could sense the atmosphere had changed.

  ‘You can’t fire an unsuppressed round,’ King said. ‘Not when you’re still trying to keep this place a secret. That’s a shame, isn’t it? Means those guns in your hands are useless.’

  Then he leapt to his feet and used the top of his skull as a battering ram to break the bearded guy’s jaw on the way up.

  64

  The bearded guy stumbled back, blind with pain, but King didn’t worry about putting him down on the floor.

  The guy was out of the fight from a logistical standpoint.

  His jaw was broken, and that crippled you no matter how tough you were.

  King darted past him and launched into a scything front kick, slamming the Gore-Tex heel of his boot home against the chest wall of the second closest thug. He was a big beefy slab of muscle and fat, like the first guy, but King cracked his sternum all the same. He stumbled back against the wall, wheezing for breath, turning pale and grasping his chest.

  King used the momentum to pivot into a spinning backward elbow that struck home against the nose and mouth of the third guy. He’d been aiming for the forehead, where he had the best chance of knocking him unconscious with a single strike, but the third man had stepped into it, barreling toward the fight instead of shying away from it. That was why he was paid the big bucks, but it was also why he went down screaming, instead of unconscious.

  King sprinted at the fourth guy and sidestepped a wild haymaker — as he expected, as soon as the man realised it was one-on-one, he panicked and threw everything he had into a single punch with the hope of ending the fight quickly. But King had seen a thousand identical punches in his lifetime, and he threw his head off the centre line, and it missed. Then he was free to unleash four consecutive punches into the guy’s face, using the same right hand to pop-pop-pop-pop.

  The guy fell to the floor in a miserable bleeding heap and King ripped the Glock out of his appendix holster.

  The Asian man stepped into the doorway, with his hand on his belt, searching for his own weapon.

  Responding immediately to the crisis.

  King had the Glock pointed between his eyes before he could blink.

  King said, ‘Take your hand off your belt.’

  The guy kept it there, his eyes drilling into King, making rapid calculations.

  King said, ‘When that hand moves, it had better be moving away from your weapon. If you go even an inch towards it, I’ll blow your brains out.’

  The hand didn’t move.

  King said, ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  The man didn’t react — his face remained passive, blank, unflinching. But he took his hand off his belt, and held it toward King, fingers splayed.

  He did the same with his other hand.

  King breathed a sigh.

  He said, ‘Take me to where your silencer is.’

  The man stared at him.

  King said, ‘Now.’

  ‘We do not have one,’ the man said in his low, whispering voice.

  Like a monk breaking a ten-year vow of silence.

  King said, ‘I heard these boys ask for it. Or would you rather I discharged my weapon without it?’

  The small man accepted defeat, and gave a curt nod.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  King didn’t enjoy the more brutal aspects of the job, but sometimes they were necessary. The simple truth was that although he’d beat down the four guns-for-hire, their wounds were in no way permanent. They were bleeding, and cradling broken noses and jaws, but in the time it took King to find a silencer they could easily clamber to their feet and access hidden caches of weapons in the townhouse. So King stomped down on each of their heads in tur
n, taking no pleasure from it, but carrying it out all the same.

  When he finished, they were all swimming in unconsciousness.

  They’d be awake within a minute or so — this wasn’t the movies, and staying out cold for anything more than five minutes usually led to permanent brain damage — but they’d wake up dazed and confused.

  They’d be useless for the better part of an hour.

  The Asian man watched with perverse amusement. When King was finished, he smiled and said, ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘We tried to kill you. It didn’t work. I should have recognised you when you knocked on the door. This is my fault.’

  ‘You’re goddamn right it is. What’s your name?’

  ‘Jian.’

  Where are your friends?’

  ‘My friends?’

  ‘Take me to them.’

  King strode forward and grabbed a handful of Jian’s collar and shoved him out of the hallway. His heart was thrumming hard in his chest at the myriad possibilities, but when they moved to the next room and found the three Geosphere workers cowering in the corner, King wasn’t surprised.

  This wasn’t their world, after all.

  King said, ‘The silencer.’

  They were in a hollowed-out kitchen with the skeletons of upmarket cabinetry dotting the walls. There was a kitchen island in the centre of the room — a giant slab of marble covered in a protective wrap. It was the most expensive instalment in the building, and perhaps the only finished piece inside. The same muted lighting coated this room — the sparse illumination fell in sheets of light and dark blue.

  It lengthened the shadows.

  It added to the fear the Geosphere trio were feeling.

  King figured he’d help them along in their terror.

  He said, ‘All three of you get over here.’

  He jabbed the Glock in their direction, as if he were about to use it.

  They practically ran to him.

  He said, ‘Lie down on the floor and put your hands behind your backs.’

  They complied.

  At the same time, Jian went over to the dusty countertop beside the kitchen island and picked up a Gemtech GM-9 suppressor.

  ‘Toss it over here,’ King said.

  Jian complied.

  But the tension was palpable in the air.

  The guy was tensed up like a coiled spring, searching for the slightest chink in King’s armour, and King would be damned if he was about to give it to him. But he knew Jian would capitalise on it if he found it, so he said, ‘Come here.’

  Jian seemed to realise he was about to be incapacitated.

  He took three steps toward King and lunged.

  King hesitated.

  Because he was contemplating trying to shoot the guy through the leg so he could get answers, but by the time he went to adjust his aim it was too late, and Jian was too close, so he jerked his aim back up to the centre mass but then that was too late also…

  The classic mistake of indecision.

  King was only human.

  He couldn’t keep tabs on eight hostiles at once without massacring them to compensate.

  Which was what he should have done in the first place.

  Jian crashed into him with surprising dexterity and they both went toppling to the floor.

  65

  Chaos reigned.

  King used the size advantage to hurl Jian off him, and he lined up a shot with the Glock but the guy spun and smashed a fist down on top of the pistol, crushing it into the floor. King fired anyway and the bullet roared in the empty room and the three Geosphere workers flinched and dropped to the floor in sheer shock.

  The bullet missed, and Jian vaulted off the floor and kicked out and caught King in the chest, but he rolled with it and used the momentum to dissipate most of the impact. It winded him all the same, but he didn’t feel it. He used the gap to spring to his feet but Jian kept crushing pressure on the Glock, and it came free from his grip. He kicked out at it, making sure Jian couldn’t get his hands on it either, and the pistol skittered away across the tiles.

  Jian hit him hard in the stomach, nearly doubling him over, and that hurt. King hadn’t been hit like that in some time. He didn’t go down to his knees, but Jian sensed weakness and surged forward. When he came into range, King hit him in the jaw with an uppercut that staggered him on the spot. But he still managed a final punch in semi-consciousness, and it slammed home — knuckles to flesh — against King’s ribcage.

  And his liver shut down.

  Fuck, King thought.

  It was all he could manage.

  All the pain caught up to him. His body shut down involuntarily, his liver burning like hot molten fire, and he sat down with his back against the kitchen island and tried his best to mask how badly he was hurt.

  Because he realised, if he could wait it out, he’d win.

  The three Geosphere workers were on the other side of the room, cowering away from the fight. It made sense — they were watching two trained murderers do their best to kill each other, to tear each other limb from limb, and if you weren’t accustomed to violence it was visceral to behold. They were in commercial fitness shape, but that wouldn’t cut it in an arena like this. The stakes were impossibly high.

  But if they knew any better, they’d pile in right now.

  Because Jian went to step in and finish King off, but when he put his foot down his ankle wobbled and gave out. And he looked down in disbelief at his legs as they refused to respond. Jian realised he was far more hurt than he realised — often, getting rocked by a punch didn’t reveal itself until your legs simply collapsed on you.

  That happened now, and Jian stumbled and lurched and fell to the floor.

  Like two drunk bar-room brawlers, they sat on their rears and heaved for breath and tried to get their bearings.

  The first one to their feet would win.

  King recognised this, and went to lever himself up on one foot, trying to grip the lip of the bench above his head for support. But a sickening wave of nausea gripped him, and his liver screamed in protest, and he folded over at the waist and did his best not to let the pain show on his face.

  But he couldn’t help himself.

  He winced, and suppressed a moan.

  Jian sat still, composing himself.

  The room went quiet.

  And slowly, one by one, the Geosphere crew started to realise they should interfere.

  Understanding spread across each of their faces. They flashed nervous glances at one another. Then the first guy — in his early fifties with tanned wrinkled skin from too many vacations in the Caribbean — stepped forward. He seemed hesitant to move, still terrified to get involved. But there was a certain detachment in his eyes — he was doing his best to be ruthless, amoral. He already did it at work everyday. What difference did it make if he had to stomp down on someone’s head a few times and finish it?

  He advanced toward King.

  King let out a guttural groan, figuring if they knew he was hurt there was no point masking it.

  That seemed to encourage the Geosphere worker. The tanned wrinkles creased into a lurid smile. And at that point King realised there was little separating a corporate sociopath from a violent sociopath, save for habits. This man would willingly kill to save his own skin. It was all the same principle. He simply hadn’t done it before.

  But he was about to.

  The man got a surge of confidence and came forward and raised his bespoke dress shoe into the air and brought it down.

  King couldn’t get out of the way in time. All the combat experience and physical conditioning in the world meant nothing when you got hit in the liver. His blood vessels were dilating, his heart rate decreasing, his blood pressure dropping. Total shutdown. Game over.

  So King tried to move his head, but it didn’t work.

  The shoe crashed down on his temple.

  Crack.

  Darkness.

 
; But then he came back as fast as he’d gone out.

  He blinked hard and saw stars exploding in his vision, popping and bursting and slithering around. He saw double. But he wasn’t out.

  The Geosphere worker clenched his teeth, and veins popped out the side of his neck. He was supercharged with adrenaline. Maybe he’d never thrown a punch or a kick with venom in his life. But he could do it again.

  So he did.

  He raised his foot, and tensed his core, and brought his leg down.

  Straight toward King’s unprotected face.

  66

  But the guy missed.

  Because the crippling pain in King’s mid-section receded by a hair, and a hair was all he needed. He catapulted out of the way and the dress shoe sailed on past his face. He harnessed the magical power of momentum and was on his feet in a split second. The colour drained from the Geosphere worker’s face, and King slashed a sideways elbow into his temple, stunning him.

  The guy fell across the surface of the kitchen island, stunned but not out.

  King didn’t care.

  He walked straight past the guy, and straight past Jian, and picked up the Glock.

  He didn’t care about the silencer anymore.

  He shot the Geosphere worker through the back of the neck, killing him instantly, then pistol-whipped Jian, keeping him semi-conscious. The other two workers were cowering in the corner, so King went back into the hallway to check on the four mercenaries he’d put down, but not out.

  And they certainly weren’t out.

  Two of them were on their feet, with guns in their hands, and the other two were scrabbling for the weapons they’d dropped.

  King shot them once each in the head.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  He exhaled, put the gun back in his holster, and returned to the kitchen with a primitive calmness he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  He had control.

  The two remaining Geosphere workers were standing there, horrified at how it had all played out, and Jian was on the floor, equally stunned.

  King caught his breath and said, ‘It really didn’t need to go like that.’

  No-one responded.

  King turned to the Geosphere guys and said, ‘Lucky you didn’t back your buddy up.’