Weapons

by Matt Rogers

  Heading to punch the clock.

  King mirrored their movements, and he could do a damn good job at that when the situation demanded it. Even though he’d never worked at a normal occupation in his life, he injected as much existential dread into his posture, minimising his bulk and slouching toward the concrete as it flowed past under his feet.

  He noticed the target warehouse in his peripheral vision. It was tall, dark and rusting, looming up against the backdrop of the dawn. He saw metal stairways twisting down the sides of the building like cages, and iron girders running across the exterior, and large smudged windows. He kept walking, staring straight ahead, not paying the building any attention. It didn’t exactly stand out — there were a dozen like it on the street.

  Then, as he came directly under the ground level awning, he turned straight into the narrow alleyway between the building and its neighbour. He did it in one smooth motion, making sure not to draw the eye. No jerky movements, no sudden change of direction, just a slick slicing sidestep.

  Then he was under the shadow of the fire stairs.

  He climbed them immediately, keeping a close eye on what lay above. The walkways, like a series of cages sprawling into the heavens, were deserted. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  Instantly he saw the sanity of using solo operatives. He hadn’t been able to grasp the necessity before, but now it was clear. The bomb team were no doubt watching the street like hawks. Any attempt from Army grunts to infiltrate the warehouse wouldn’t have lasted very long, unless they were coming in on their own like King had. But then they’d be operating alone, and they weren’t prepared for that the way he’d been conditioned all his life.

  It would be the same with Slater, and the same with Ruby.

  Espionage. Deception. The silent slash of the blade.

  He slid the Ka-Bar out of his belt, and the Glock out of his appendix holster, and started up the first steep flight of stairs. There was no use keeping the weapons concealed. He was on the side of the building, and if anyone saw him, they’d understand he wasn’t a lost tradesman.

  They’d know immediately.

  So this was the most dangerous stretch of the operation. Before the first strike. The fate of the country hung in the balance, and that pressure simmered his brain like it was on a hot plate. The dull throbbing of adrenaline and stress and fear started behind his eyeballs, and gripped his temples, and ran cold down the back of his neck.

  He was totally alert, firing on all cylinders, ready to react at the drop of a hat. Sheer focus settled over him, and he took it all in stride, because he’d felt it before.

  Never like this, but the underlying sensation wasn’t foreign.

  He reached the first floor, and crouched low on the grated metal floor of the walkway, and listened hard through a thin wooden door for any signs of life. He couldn’t hear a peep. Moving quiet as a mouse, he reached out and touched the door with a single gloved finger. There was no handle, and maybe, just maybe…

  It swung inward, a few inches.

  He breathed out.

  A way in.

  Perhaps this was all possible after all.

  He gripped the Glock tighter, ready to burst up off the walkway and explode through the door, unleashing all the energy building up in his core. He figured he could kill a dozen men with the first clip if he picked his shots correctly, which he knew he’d manage to do. He had a brain unlike most on this planet, and if he could—

  The door swung open in his face.

  King stood up, fast, and aimed the gun, but he didn’t fire.

  Because the figure standing in the doorway wasn’t holding a gun.

  He was thin and small and pale with hollow cheekbones and a shaved head and gaunt eyes. There was no life in them. It had been conditioned out of him. King had seen the same look in prisoners of war. Immediately he knew the guy was one of the mentally ill Violetta had referenced from security footage, discharged from the military, probably held here against his will and brainwashed by the Chinese or the cartel or other disillusioned vets to carry out a suicide mission.

  Because he was wearing a vest packed with plastic explosive.

  And he was holding a detonator.

  And his thumb was tight on it.

  He looked King in the eyes, and panic rippled through him, and he twitched imperceptibly, as if he were about to let go right then and blow them all to hell because of the sheer shock.

  King hissed, ‘No.’

  The guy kept staring at him.

  Neither of them blinked.

  They were inches apart.

  King thought his heart might burst in his chest. He’d never felt it pound like this before. Sweat came off his brow, and leached out of his temples, and stained the vest he was wearing under his shirt.

  They stood there in a mortal stalemate.

  King said, ‘Wait.’

  The guy didn’t say a word.

  He was sweating too.

  It was cold.

  Wind rippled against the fire stairs, and rattled the walkway.

  King said, ‘Let me talk. Please, fuck, just let me talk.’

  The guy might as well have been a Greek statue.

  There was nothing left in his eyes.

  King thought, That’s it.

  That’s all she wrote.

  My life ends here.

  Then the guy said through dry, chapped lips, ‘Talk.’

  81

  The RV door slammed open, and Slater came face to face with Miguel Ángel Gómez.

  He recognised the repulsive cartel sicario from the surveillance photos, but he didn’t let it show. He spread the familiar warm smile onto his face that fellow nature lovers shared, and said, ‘How ya doin’?’

  And he did a good job at it.

  Because Gómez didn’t suspect a goddamn thing.

  He was short and squat but built like a bull, with a thick neck and giant hands and tree trunks for legs. He looked like he could tear someone limb from limb.

  Then again, so did Slater. And Slater was doing his best to disprove that preconception.

  Gómez stared.

  Impassively.

  Disinterestedly.

  Slater said, ‘You got a toilet, brother?’

  Gómez said, ‘No.’

  ‘Please, man,’ Slater said, feigning genuine pain. ‘There ain’t nowhere around here to go.’

  ‘Piss on a tree.’

  ‘Man, I gotta shit, y’know?’

  Slater cracked a broad smile, like it was the funniest thing in the world.

  Gómez didn’t.

  The bull-like man said, ‘I said no.’

  ‘Why you gotta be so rude, man? You hiking these trails? What are ya doin’ here?’

  Gómez was about to slam the door in the stranger’s face, but Slater saw that momentary pause of concern in his eyes. As if he were thinking, What if this looks suspicious? How are hikers supposed to act?

  He didn’t want to get busted in the final hours before it was all about to kick off.

  So he switched from total aggression to searching for a lame excuse.

  The man said, ‘Yes, I hike these trails. But no toilet.’

  ‘No toilet?’ Slater said. ‘C’mon, man, you ain’t gotta be like that. This is a big RV, brother. You got a toilet back there for sure.’

  ‘It’s broken.’

  Slater sighed and bowed his head.

  He started to cry.

  Gómez had no goddamn idea what to do. He stood there with his hands by his sides and an expression of total confusion on his face.

  Slater mumbled through blubbering tears, ‘I just … I just been drivin’ around out here for a long time, brother. I’m hurting. I’m in pain. I need a—’

  He stepped up onto the first step in mid-sentence.

  Gómez almost didn’t notice — he was transfixed by the range of emotions he was witnessing.

  Slater took another step up into the RV.

  Now he was out of sight of the
second RV. He knew they’d all be watching him through the tinted windows, searching for any sign of suspicion. But now, in their eyes, Slater had been welcomed aboard, so Gómez obviously was in control of the situation. Maybe Gómez would kill the hiker. Maybe not.

  Whatever — it wasn’t their concern anymore.

  But as Slater made it onto the second step, Gómez snarled and shook his head, refusing to let the stranger any further into the RV. He reached out and planted a hand onto Slater’s chest and shoved him hard. Because if this was an ordinary civilian coming aboard, he certainly couldn’t be allowed to see the arsenal of automatic weaponry spread across the tables and chairs and beds.

  Slater caught the railing with his palm and held tight, and Gómez shoved him again, but he didn’t budge.

  Bedlam erupted.

  Gómez turned at the top of the steps to shout something to his comrades — probably to the effect of ‘Help me get this crazy motherfucker off the bus before I blow a hole in his chest!’

  But he didn’t even get one word into that sentence, because Slater shot out a hand and grabbed the back of his neck and used all his weight and the assistance of gravity to drop his face into the top of the railing. Gómez’s nose struck the metal banister on its rounded tip and he cried out in pain as blood erupted from his nostrils and his nose cracked.

  Slater activated.

  He hurled Gómez aside and shouldered past the thick Mexican, and ended up facing off in a tight claustrophobic space with four angry dark-featured sicarios. They were the cream of the crop — far from the youthful amateurs he’d encountered in Tulum. They ranged from early thirties to late forties and sported lean wiry muscle. The sort of physique you got from farm work, or, perhaps, regularly beating people to death.

  Hard motherfuckers, through and through.

  And they reacted instantly.

  Because they were born and bred in war. They were uncivilised men, and uncivilised men were always the most dangerous.

  The closest man to Slater instinctively reached for the rifle on the table in front of him, but then pulled back, because he remembered he’d been cleaning it. It was lying disassembled, in pieces. The hesitation cost him. Slater kicked him hard in the chest, sending him careening back into two of his colleagues, pinning them all against the small countertop.

  Slater went for his Glock, but then he remembered the second RV.

  He swore under his breath.

  It was too close. They’d hear the gunshots, and it’d be over. They’d fire up the engine and peel out of there, never to be seen again until they materialised in the centre of San Francisco with guns loaded.

  So instead he pulled his Ka-Bar out and sprinted across the tiny space, meeting the fourth guy head-on. That sicario had been going for his sidearm, and he even managed to get it free from its holster. But then Slater was on him, and he slammed into him so hard that the gun ended up crushed between their bodies, and Slater used the opportunity to slide the knife into his ribcage and twist upward, piercing his heart with a grotesque muted crunch.

  He pulled the knife out and spun and slashed the throat of the guy he’d kicked in the chest. Blood sprayed as arteries were severed.

  It’s a brutal world, he thought.

  That guy went down and the other two weren’t close enough to weapons to snatch them up. Slater caught one of them in the stomach and practically disembowelled him. He tried to pull the knife out but it was lodged on something.

  So Slater let it go and leapt onto the fourth guy with all his weight, crushing him against the countertop, maybe breaking a rib. He thundered an uppercut into the guy’s mid-section then head-butted him hard, forehead to forehead. They both reeled from the impact, but Slater was accustomed to getting smacked in the head. He recovered in a couple of seconds, and worked the knife free from the third man and inserted it into the fourth guy’s throat.

  Then he saw Gómez dashing for the open door, his nose streaming blood.

  Slater leapt across the RV, clearing an entire partition in the process, and spear-tackled Gómez into the wall, spilling them both across the steps. He knocked his head on the way down and landed awkwardly on one shoulder, nearly dislocating it. But he righted himself at the last second and spilled across the steps in an awkward tangle of limbs.

  Gómez came down on top of him.

  The guy was short and square, so he practically tumbled off Slater like a bowling ball, heading straight for the entrance again.

  In the claustrophobic tightness of the stairwell Slater reached out and looped his arm around Gómez’s throat and locked it tight. The sicario wheezed for breath, but Slater yanked him back on top of him and looped his legs around the guy’s stomach, so Gómez was wearing him as a backpack.

  Then Slater squeezed and held on for dear life.

  Gómez went red, and gasped for breath.

  They slid down a step.

  Now they were inches from tumbling out through the open door, which would send them both sprawling out onto the gravel. And the sicarios in the other RV would still be watching, and they’d see, and they’d radio out the call to scatter, and that would be that.

  Slater squeezed tighter.

  He felt his forearm burning out, lactic acid flooding the muscle, killing its power.

  And Gómez’s thick neck was still protecting him.

  He was nearly out, but not quite.

  Slater strained and squeezed and wrenched and screwed up his face in exertion.

  Gómez kicked out with both legs, flailing them in thin air.

  One foot darted over the threshold.

  If they were watching, they would have seen it.

  With his heart in his mouth Slater kept squeezing, and finally Gómez went limp.

  Slater held on for another full minute until he was sure the guy was dead.

  He let go of the corpse, and wriggled out from underneath it, and dragged it back up the steps.

  His lungs burned, his chest heaved, and he couldn’t feel his right arm because of the lactic acid build-up.

  But he’d done it.

  He’d cleared the first RV.

  A few more vehicles to go, he thought.

  He bent over at the waist and sucked in air, contemplating how close he’d come to failure.

  But now it didn’t matter how much noise he made.

  He drew the Glock from its holster, rested his finger an inch off the trigger, and composed himself.

  Now.

  He leapt down the steps and sprinted for the second RV.

  82

  Ruby gave a small ditzy laugh as Phil led her through the knee-high grass.

  She purred, ‘Oh, you’re bad…’

  ‘Am I?’ he said. ‘Want to know a secret?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘There’s some important people in there. They don’t want visitors.’

  She tiptoed forward and touched her lips to the side of his neck, grazing his grey stubble. ‘I thought you didn’t give a fuck about anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Then let’s go. I don’t have all day.’

  He grinned and lumbered up the steps, still holding her by the hand. She followed willingly. It was honestly pathetic how effortlessly she’d convinced him to betray the request of a collection of serious stone-cold killers, but that was the power of an ill-timed erection.

  He opened the door and pulled her into a communal area that reeked of old beer and weed and tobacco. There were tattered couches scattered across the room, and an ancient television in the corner, and a faded pool table in the centre of the room lit by pendant lights covered in the Budweiser logo.

  It was obvious the mercs hired by the Chinese weren’t using the clubhouse because of its amenities. She figured the Junkyard Dogs were the only organisation in San Francisco so far to the right that they were willing to buy into murderous ideologies. Not that the mercs possessed those ide
ologies. They were contract workers through and through, doing everything for the money, but they could probably justify the massacre to the Junkyard Dogs under some thinly veiled anti-immigration shtick.

  There were guns and knives and chunks of plastic explosive all over the place.

  Rifles, pistols, a few shotguns, even an RPG.

  Jesus Christ, Ruby thought. It’s going to be a slaughter.

  She felt sick to her stomach.

  There was a single guy in the communal area — the rest were in their rooms. He was cleaning an automatic weapon, but he looked up from it to see Phil leading a ditzy young socialite by the hand. He was probably late twenties, but built like a powerhouse, with long black hair and a surprisingly handsome face. He had a chiselled jawline and slate grey eyes and olive skin.

  Sociopaths come in all shapes and sizes, Ruby thought.

  The guy’s eyes went wide and he hissed, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!’

  Phil waved a hand dismissively, but he looked nervous. ‘Relax, brother. She hasn’t seen anything. Have you, honey?’

  Ruby giggled and rolled her eyes and looked at the opposite wall to prove her point. ‘I ain’t seen shit.’

  He liked that.

  He pulled her toward one of the corridors on the opposite side of the room.

  He said, ‘Trust me, it’s all good.’

  He ushered Ruby into a dark hallway with stained carpet and hung back for long enough to whisper, ‘She’s coked out of her mind. She won’t remember this in a few hours. Give me a spell.’

  Ruby heard every word.

  And she heard the guy respond, ‘Might have to kill her.’

  ‘We’ll work that out later. Let me get my rocks off first.’

  ‘Alright.’

  She took a couple of steps down the hallway before he entered, so there were no doubts as to whether she was out of earshot. She didn’t want him making a lunge for her. She needed the upper hand from the jump.